Gauntlet: Lies
by Cap'n Chryssalid
Summary: (Completed) Those seeking answers will find only the opposite, as suspisions grow, even among the closest of allies. Once more a pall shadow has fallen, but where one sees tragedy, another sees opportunity. Sequel to Gauntlet: Crucible
1. Default Chapter

Like a good communist, I own nothing.

* * *

**NOTE: this is a sequel to "Gauntlet: Crucible" and thus should be read sequentially.**

"Gauntlet: Lies"  
Part 1

* * *

May 6

Butch narrowed his eyes and looked down the hall. It was quiet: too quiet. Stepping forward, he felt the gentle glow of a shaft of light from a barred window, high above, play across his face, and its mottled gray and black camouflage paint. In the distance, there was the flapping of wings as some wayward bird took to the air. The Rowdyruff Boy immediately stood perfectly still and listened for the telltale signs of an ambush.

Slowly, he pivoted, his palms sweaty on the bars of his oversized machine gun. It weighed almost forty pounds, but that kind of weight was nothing to him. He was using his powers as little as possible, as part of the hunt, but he had to use just a hint of them to walk with all his gear. Across the broken hole opposite where he'd entered, he just caught a hint of movement.

Then the same from the left, near a cracked window.

"Surrounded," He hissed from between clenched teeth. In the distance the staccato ring of gunfire echoed across the scarred battlefield. Carefully, Butch squeezed the forward trigger, warming up the weapon. He shifted his body, and just as one of the shadows moved, and cut loose with a volley of green fire.

The shadow howled in pain, writhed, and fell back.

Butch whirled, as he picked up the sound of charging footsteps from behind. Again, he depressed the primary trigger, and the gun responded with great enthusiasm. His charging opponents were like wheat before him, and they fell to the ground in waves as he passed the weapon back and forth, left and right, burning through ammunition.

"Beeeautiful!" He grinned, a long loop belt across his shoulder pouring more and more ammo into the hungry weapon. Slowly at first, then more quickly, he started to side step, avoiding the hastily thrown in cover fire of the enemy. As it grew in intensity, scoring hits on the ground at his feet and the wall behind him, Butch began to back up.

The ground was thick with writhing wounded.

"Boomer!" Butch called into the microphone in his helmet. "I'm pinned down here! Looks like I stirred up the whole damn hornet's nest! A little help?"

"Right! I'll be there in a second or two!" Gunfire came from the other end as Boomer answered.

"Damn it." Butch barely dodged as a projectile flew past his head, nearly catching him. He'd already taken a shot or two to the body, but his vest cushioned the blow enough to make it not count.

"Come on! Come on! You want some of this? You want some more?!" He poured on the juice, full auto. The last wave hit the ground, groaning and screaming. "Yeah! That's what I thought!"

Shouldering the large weapon, now almost empty, he heard footsteps going around the side of the building, through the concrete wall separating them. They were trying to cut him off from behind! Butch sneered, spat at the ground, and whipped out two semiautomatic pistols. With a feral cry, he ran forward, into what had been the thick of the enemy. At his feet, those still conscious were groaning in pain.

Breaking out into the open bush, Butch's eye caught the stragglers of the enemy offensive, and arms out, opened fire. The ground at his feet kicked up as scattered enemy fire dogged his every move, trying to catch up. Jumping over a rock, he rolled, and got back onto his feet, still firing at both sides. When both guns ran empty, he tossed them aside, reached down to his belt, and took out two more. Spinning around, he started to run backwards, still firing like mad, a warcry escaping his lips.

"I am the GOD OF WAR! None can stand against me!!" He yelled at the top of his lungs. When he ran out of ammo again, he fell back on his nearly empty big machinegun. Then, like a teardrop, he felt something small hit his face, just above his narrowed left eye. He'd been hit. Reaching up, almost in shock, his hand came back dark red.

"Aww... damnit!" He cursed, shook his head, and dropped his weapons. What few of the enemy remained advanced on him steadily, but didn't fire. Burly shapes: tall men, dangerous men, watched him warily.

Butch looked up, and then past them, at a careful form on the roof of a far off building. As Butch's enemies approached him, closer into the open, two of them suddenly yelled out and fell to the ground, holding to the back of their heads. Four more followed, and then a dozen, as they were picked off. There was yet more, heavier, gunfire as someone charged through the dense foliage. Just as the last body hit the ground, clutching his back in agony, Boomer became visible through the rough bushes.

"I'd call this sector secure." Boomer smiled and leaned over one of his kills. The body turned over, revealing several splatters of blue over the left breast of the chest. "Check this out man. That's what's called... fire control."

"Shut up, Boomer." Butch fumed. "I may be dead, but I sure as hell got the most kills, and that's what matters!"

"It is?" Boomer quirked an eyebrow at his brother. "In what universe?"

Butch just 'hmfed' and crossed his arms. Boomer started counting, and in a minute, Brick joined them, sniper rifle in hand. Looking around, he slowly nodded. Floating up into the air, he looked around, and then came back down to just off the ground.

"Looks like all of 'em. Start waking them up and we can tally up the kills." Brick was about to head off, when he stopped and looked over his shoulder. "Dude. You got shot."

"Yeah? How'd you guess, Sherlock?" Butch wiped a bit of dark red paint from his brow.

Brick just sighed and floated off. Butch grumbled under his breath and started lightly kicking the bruised and occasionally bleeding people. Those that were totally out of it were propped up against a long length of fence that had its electricity turned off. It took a while. The convicts they'd "borrowed" from Townsville Prison had scattered all over the makeshift battlefield, and predictably, a bunch had tried to escape from the enclosure.

They'd found a fairly weak part of the warehouse compound's electric fencing, and tried to dig out with makeshift tools and bare hands. That was the group Butch had run across on his scouting run. They hadn't gotten very far, luckily: that many of them getting loose in Townsville would've been a huge fiasco, even for the group of Boys that did whatever they liked in the city. Butch also gathered up the weapons that had been handed out to the convicts - all paintball guns of various manufacture - and put them in a big pile.

In between recounting battle stories, the boys counted their respective 'kills.' Out of the three hundred potential kills, Brick had 62, all clean kills - headshots. Boomer had 86, which left an even 152 for Butch. Of course, most of Butch's targets had been hit all over their body, arms, legs, torsos... and a few tenacious individuals had been splattered almost from head to toe. The boys were using large caliber powerful paintball weapons, many of which had been quickly 'modified' by Mojo to get them out of the house, and his hair, for a day. Naturally, then, a large number of the former prisoners were bleeding and in varying amounts of pain.

"HA!" Butch pointed at the red and blue ruffs. "I WIN!"

"No... you died. Boomer won," Brick pointed out. Butch scowled at Boomer, who just stuck out his tongue and gave him a big thumbs-up.

"I had half the kills, for cryin' out loud!"

"Boomer. Get the bus, would'ya?" Brick motioned for the blue Rowdyruff to go, and off he went. Brick then faced Butch, slightly annoyed. "Look man. You did great, kill wise, no one's disputing that. You were a killin' machine out there. I saw some of it myself. But you also died. You should have waited for Boomer, pulled back, and then we could have coordinated an attack."

"There was no time!" Butch rolled his eyes. "Look, Boss-man, I know that would've been the reasonable thing to do, but sometimes ya gotta throw reason and caution out the window, ya know? There's no glory in waitin' around!"

Brick sighed and spoke more quietly. "Man, I'm not gonna cross with you today on this. Just try and be happy for Boomer, all right? He followed orders, he survived, and he won the game, ok?"

"Yeah, ok, Bossman. No big deal." Butch looked up as Boomer descended, carrying two prison buses. The boys chatted and congratulated each other while the first load of despondent and beaten criminals boarded the two buses back to jail. The boys shuttled them back, dropped off their 'volunteers' and went for the second batch that Brick had stayed behind to guard. With the whole population returned, the three Rowdyruff Boys slowly cruised over the city of Townsville, looking for something to waste a few hours on.

Mojo had thrown them out for the day after something he was working on exploded in his face leading him to claim that they'd been distracting him. Hungry and still high on adrenaline, they crashed in on a fancy French restaurant and ordered (see: demanded) everything on the menu, taking little bits of each dish. Butch had hated the tiny portions, and blasted one of the tables before forcing the cooks to make some Creole-type seafood gumbo that he had virtually inhaled in less than a minute.

By nightfall, Butch and Boomer took a few sweeps over the city, looking for trouble, while Brick retreated to his typical perch on the Metrowest Building to think. Late that night, near midnight, Butch returned, more than satisfied for the night: he'd broken the arms of some guy trying to knife a lady in skimpy clothes (Brick coughed at that part when Butch tried to describe it) and, by chance, beaten the daylights out of some guy trying to rob a cheap convenience store down in the Townsville Chinatown. Boomer came back a few minutes later. He hadn't found anything that he beat anyone up for, but he did put the scare on a few weird characters that Boomer described as 'walking slime bags.'

Before they headed back to Mojo's, Brick stood and looked out over the ocean.

To him, today had been... in a very critical way, disappointing.

Out at sea, the weather was calm.

Too calm.

* * *

Beneath the waves, a predator lurked. The ship, a Los Angeles class nuclear submarine, was on maneuvers. Despite being almost fifteen years old, it was still state of the art: a powerful and silent threat three hundred and sixty feet long equipped with missiles and torpedoes more than capable of bombarding any oceanic or land based target up to two thousand miles away.

But it wasn't the biggest fish in the sea that night.

In the dark, something larger, older, meaner, was lurking.

The predator had become the prey.

* * *

May 7.

Townsville Docks.

"Eeewww!! Gross!!"

"COOL!"

"What is it?"

"That's why you three are here." Sarah Bellum fancied herself the most patient person in Townsville. The last few days had stretched her thin, however. The apparent death of the Powerpuff Girls, and the retreat of the Mayor even deeper into his own little world, had been a very hard time. She alone had tried to rally some sort of effort to arrest the Rowdyruff Boys, but the police had refused to get involved, and the Governor didn't want to risk an outright war in his State unless there was a clear and present threat to the town that warranted it. The Boys hadn't given her any sort of 'clear and present threat' to report beyond bullying, some petty theft, and severely injuring the occasional criminal. Even Mojo had refrained from doing anything terrible.

Then, of course, they had found out why, just after the sphere creature descended on Townsville. She had been one of the few who had knew about its impending self destruction. And, despite the return of the Girls, she had been convinced that it was her final hour. When the Powerpuff's attack had been repulsed and pushed back, it had seemed like the end was only a fraction of a second away. Of course they had survived, but the emotional rollercoaster she'd been on hadn't been a fun one.

Or an uncostly one.

"What do ya mean, why we're here?" Buttercup looked tired. No huge surprise - she and her sisters had been called away from getting ready for school. "We didn't do this."

"You didn't?" Ms. Bellum asked Blossom, just to be sure.

"Nope." She shrugged. "Maybe the Rowdyruff Boys did it."

Sarah sneered at that, and looked down at the mess that lay strewn over the dock. It was the remains of a large clawed hand, with webbed fingers and massive claws. The hand was attached, mostly, to a length of sinewy, heavily muscled arm. The skin was a sickly pale orange, like it was diseased and had been floating in the water for days, gradually decaying as it was nibbled on by half the sea creatures in the ocean. It ended abruptly halfway up the arm, trailing into ragged, torn flesh. It wasn't leaking blood, which she was thankful for, and was currently partly tangled in netting.

"I dunno. We'd have heard something." Buttercup looked more closely at the severed arm. "It's defiantly a monster's arm. Hmm..."

The brunette Powerpuff carefully examined the remains. Blossom may have been her intellectual superior, but no one knew as much about the physiology of maiming monsters than Buttercup Utonium. It was her specialty: her life. She pointed to the ragged tear between the bicep and triceps.

"It looks... like it was torn off. Twisted, and torn off. Notice the... uh... shearing, I think is the word. Like how a crocodile eats." Buttercup smiled and turned on Bubbles. "Grabbing some poor dumb animal, and twisting and ripping in a death-roll while it screams and screams and..."

Bubbles's eyes widened, she took one more look at the gruesome arm, and screamed. Blossom immediately interjected. "Buttercup! ...To the point. Please."

"Whatever." Buttercup smirked at Bubbles discomfort, and looked up at Ms. Bellum. "Anyway, I don't think the Rowdyruff Boys did this. It was probably another monster."

"I didn't think they... ate... each other..." Bubbles sounded slightly confused. "I mean, some of them talk and stuff..."

"Just because some of them can talk doesn't make them human. They're still monsters," Blossom answered, "Right, Ms. Bellum?"

"I honestly don't know." She sighed. "There was a ship that didn't come into port today. A fishing boat."

The girls all turned instantly serious.

"Were..." Blossom started.

"It was a chartered night fishing boat." Ms. Bellum frowned at the topic. She wouldn't have told them the details if they hadn't directly asked for them. "There were twelve people aboard. ...It could be nothing, though!" She hastily added. "They could just be running late."

The thought of dying, so soon after being saved from such a terrible menace as they'd just faced, just days before, struck the Mayor's secretary as horribly ironic. It was the kind of depressing thing that struck here every few months, when one crisis just seemed to follow another. At least she didn't have to officially deal with the press. She had the Mayor to take that flak for her while she got the meat of things.

Blossom thought back to the last crisis, but for different reasons.

"Did you get any reports from the Navy?" She asked. "We... sort of heard they had a sonar net between Monster Island and Townsville. And they have ships out there, too, I've seen them."

Ms. Bellum blinked. Since when had Blossom known about that? It was a matter of National Security, and it had been decided by higher ups not to let the Girls know about it. So how did they know now? Truthfully, there was a lot of traffic between Monster Island and the Townsville Coast, which lead to a lot of false alarms and misidentifications. It wasn't a foolproof system, especially when coupled with the fact that local operators had been infected with what she liked to call 'Townsville Disease' which made them more than a little blundering and incompetent.

"No, sorry. Nothing substantial that they saw fit to tell us." She yawned, using her notepad to cover her mouth (and face). She'd had a bad feeling last night and missed several hours of sleep.

"That's ok! We'll find out ourselves!" Blossom faced her sisters and motioned her eyes upward. They took the hint and flew up, meeting her a hundred feet in the air.

"What's the big deal?" Buttercup sulked. They hadn't even had breakfast yet, and she was starved.

"Mojo seems to be able to crack into that surveillance stuff. Remember what Brick said when he explained about that big sphere creature?" Blossom pointed out to sea. "Well, that sort of thing would be real useful right now."

Buttercup lolled her head to the side, reluctant to outright agree. "Ok. So, what?"

"One of us has to ask for it," Bubbles answered. The other two Powerpuffs looked at her. "I suppose I'll do it."

"Are you kidding?" Buttercup floated backwards a bit as she talked. She turned to Blossom. "You can't consider sending Bubbles over there alone!"

"Like any of us can fight off all three of those boys alone," Blossom said, sarcasm heavy. "I'll go."

"Why you?" Buttercup uncrossed her arms. If Blossom didn't know better, she'd have thought the green puff was concerned.

"It's my responsibility," Blossom explained, after a few seconds silence. "Besides, it'd probably involve a lot of talking and explaining and looking at boring diagrams and charts and stuff."

Buttercup relented at that point.

Bubbles, as always, wasn't willing to argue over it.

"Good. Don't worry about me. Just fly high over the water around the area and keep an eye out for anything suspicious. ...I doubt this one will come on land, or it probably would have already." Blossom gave her sisters a last, quick wave, and sped off for Townsville Central Park.

* * *

Breakfast was tense.

Mojo sat at the head of the table, as always, slowly eating his standard breakfast meal of two eggs benedict, with potato slices on the side, French toast (no cinnamon - Mojo hated cinnamon apparently), a tall glass of grapefruit juice and a steaming cup of green tea. As he ate, he read the newspaper, which was delivered right to the door high atop the Observatory, much to the newspaper boy's chagrin. Around the table, the Rowdyruff boys sullenly and silently ate whatever they felt like making.

Butch, trying to up his carbohydrate intake, or something or another, was pouring himself a third bowl of Wheaties, and ravenously stirring various things into it, probably jelly or jam of some type. It was pretty gross, actually. Brick was tempted to say something about it but decided not to - it was too early in the day, and they'd all been up late watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 last night when they got back.

Boomer was eating a couple pancakes, drowning them in honey and other sweet stuff. It was an awful lot of sugar, but Boomer never seemed to get hyper or 'high' when he ate too many sweets like Brick and Butch did. The blonde Rowdyruff then focused on his food, eating it at a neutral pace. Brick himself just stuck with whatever cereal was at hand. Today it was something with tons of marshmallows and junk in lots of shapes and some cartoon rabbit on the cover. Not feeling like taking out a bowl and then having to put it away, he just ate handfuls out of the box and washed it down in his mouth with some low fat soy milk that Butch had 'purchased' (demanded). He also watched Mojo carefully, and clandestinely, trying to catch a better glimpse at the mad monkey's mood. Their 'father' was up to something, keeping them all in the dark about it, and Brick was naturally suspicious.

The doorbell rang.

"Boomer, get the door!" "Butch, get the door!" "Brick, get the door!"

Silence.

Then the doorbell rang again.

"Butch, you get it!" "Boomer, get going!" "Why doesn't Brick do something 'round here for once?" "Will one of you answer the STUPID DOOR??"

Complete silence. No one moved.

And the doorbell rang again.

"Not me!" "Not me!" Not... Aw, man!!"

"Good." Mojo ruffled his paper and went back to reading. Boomer grumbled and got up, grabbing a case of donuts on the counter. The doorbell rang again, and everyone yelled for him to hurry up, so he deliberately started walking really slowly, dragging his feet as he went.

"Aaaa... tttiiimmmeeee... wwaaarrrppp... Janeway... heeelppp meee..."

At everyone's annoyed sounds of disapproval, he finally walked up and opened the door. Eyes half closed, one hand in the donut box under his arm, he blinked at the person at their doorstep. After a second or two he thought up something witty to say.

"Hey there, Red. What's up? ...Oh, if this is about the recruitment thing we talked about the other day, I still won't join unless I get to be the Purple Powerpuff."

"Nice to see you, too," she said, and looked at him curiously. "Did you know you're standing around in your underwear?"

"Yep." He chomped down on a donut and purple goo seeped out. "Why?"

"No reason... I guess. Caught you during breakfast?"

"No wonder you're the brains of the group!" Boomer laughed. "Come on in."

She followed him inside. At seeing her, Mojo jumped to his feet.

"Powerpuff Blossom!" He looked around frantically for some type of weapon. "I... Er..." He picked up his grapefruit juice. "I have obtained a beaker of acid! I am armed! I am dangerous! I am not to be crossed! Stay back or face the wrath of Mojo Jojo!"

Boomer laughed some more. "Relax, pops! I doubt she's here ta cause trouble."

Butch looked up from his food. "Not even if we start some?"

"Chill," Brick said and held out a hand. "You kind of caught us at a bad time, Bloss. We're eating here."

"I missed breakfast." She frowned at the red Rowdyruff. "Superheroes sometimes have to do that."

"Really?" Brick replied, sarcastically. "I never imagined..."

"Missed the most important meal of the day, huh?" Boomer raised an eyebrow and offered her the donut box he had been holding. "Donut?"

She remembered the last time she'd eaten too much sugar. It hadn't been pretty, Mojo could attest to that. She was pretty hungry, however. "No thanks. ...Do you have any fruit?"

Boomer looked down at the donut box. "This has purple stuff inside: purple is a fruit."

Brick sighed loudly and stood up. He was still holding onto a box of cereal in one arm and a carton of milk in the other. Without another word, he walked off to the side, to a spare couch, and tossed on a white shirt. Taking the hint, she followed him. Now sort of dressed, he finally spoke while picking his chosen breakfast back up.

"All right. What's all this about?"

"I want... I need to know if anything got through the Navy' Sonar Net you mentioned before."

"You mean last night?" Brick's eyebrows lowered into something resembling distaste.

"Yeah." She nodded. "How'd you guess?"

"I... figured as much," He said, quickly. "Yeah, sure. That shouldn't be a big deal." He led her to Mojo's control booth looking over the open area below. "Let's see here..." He worked at the keys, quickly. Silently, he was intending to check the information himself, sometime after breakfast. It was a simple enough thing to do, but he played for time and information, going through a roundabout way of getting the data. "So, what makes ya so curious all of sudden, Bloss?"

"Some people on a boat disappeared last night."

"Really? And you need access to a sonar net that detects things under the ocean... why?"

She shifted uncomfortably behind where he sat. Good.

"We found part of a monster washed up on the shore. An arm. Buttercup thought it looked bitten off or something."

"Ah." Brick tapped a key, and a flat screen monitor displayed the stolen information. Mojo had electronic taps into all sorts of military and commercial networks all over the world. His intelligence capabilities were astounding. Brick looked at the screen for a few seconds, highlighted the recorded disturbances and checked them. There were a bunch of hits last night, at least a dozen at different times. One of them was a nuclear submarine. As he double-checked them, eyes darting back and forth, he fought against his natural inclination to scowl.

"What? What is it?" She saw the tension in his face.

"I don't know about your missing boat." Brick hesitated, but decided to tell. It wouldn't hurt, and it would help to cement her on his side in the future. Besides, lies required constant maintenance - the truth was less complicated. "But here's a big one that went silent late last night. A... Los Angeles Class submarine, SSN-774: The 'USS Townsville,' ironically enough."

Blossom ran a hand through her hair.

"That's why no one told Ms. Bellum..."

Brick saved that bit of information for later.

"Losing a nuclear submarine right off the coast isn't something to be proud of." Brick leaned back, cupped his hands behind his head. "Still... it's highly unusual. We're not the Russians, after all."

Against his better judgment, he felt a twinge of eagerness. Last night - this morning, they were pretty much interchangeable. He should've known better than to just give up after midnight. It was a mistake he wouldn't make again. He printed out a copy of the screen, and handed it to her while he thought. "Here."

"Great!" She started to head off for the elevator down. He followed, taking his food with him. Shaking the cereal box, he confirmed that there was still a bunch down at the bottom, mostly the crumbs and stuff. Walking her to the door, through the open area that served as a sort of den, or living room, he poured the last of the soymilk into the box, and slouched it around a bit. He then drank it and licked his lips. He made a mental note: it had tasted better mixed beforehand.

"You guys are pretty weird, you know that?" Blossom looked at the soggy box in his hand.

"What? You know any normal guys?" Brick got a laugh at that.

"..." She pursed her lips, resisting saying what he was probably waiting for. "Thanks, anyway."

"Whatever." He pushed her out the door. "Get outta here before I kick ya out."

Without another word, she flew off and he closed the door. Facing his brothers, well one of them (Butch had obviously finished eating and left) Brick crumpled up the box of cereal and threw it in the trash bin.

"Boomer. Put some fightin' threads on." Brick's voice was chill: his professional tone. "I'll get Butch. We've got some stuff that needs doing."


	2. Gauntlet: Lies part 2

Like a good communist, I own nothing.

"Gauntlet: Lies"  
Part 2

May 7

Brick wasn't happy.

Far from it, he was bordering on enraged.

"Dude. Where the hell are we?" Butch looked down at the blasted and desiccated island. It was pockmarked by scars and craters. Great towering trees lay burnt or broken, like matchsticks scattered to the winds. Worse even than the stench of burnt flesh and noxious fumes that hung heavy in the air, even at their height over the place, were the streaks of brown and black, the torn and mutilated bodies, and the rivers of ichor, green and red and yellow, that leaked and flowed into the sea.

"This... this is Monster Island, isn't it?" Boomer gulped, but didn't sound nervous or afraid.

"Yeah," Brick answered, though not quickly.

"Monster Island? Why on earth did you drag us to...?" Butch narrowed his eyes, concentrated his vision. In the distance, at the far side of the Island, something was moving and shifting. It was almost like a mirage, or the shimmer of the sun on the ocean - a trick on the eyes. But this had an almost palpable aura to it. Not malevolence, just ...being. Life.

"This way." Brick flew down, to the side of the Island opposite where the mirage seemed to be. As they flew, both of Brick's brothers confirmed that the destruction of the place was nearly total. Carcasses rotted in the baking sun, and the ground was as barren and lifeless as could be imagined. There were no birds in the sky: only the buzzing of flies greeted them as they made their approach closer to the ground.

A large volcano that smoked eerily dominated the center of the Island, and the stink of sulfur nearly burned their eyes, as they got closer to it. The remains of what might have once been massive grass huts and stone edifices glimmered in the rising heat, and their shadows cast long palls on the tortured land.

"This... this is nasty, man. Why ARE we here?" Boomer winced, eyes almost watering.

"I need to see something," Brick answered, and kept descending, seemingly immune to the atmosphere of the place. "I'll need you two as backup."

Finally, they were hovering just a couple dozen feet from the surface of what looked like a sort of Monster encampment. Most of the bodies looked either splattered and gibed, or eaten away. Arching bones reached mutely into the sky. Boomer swatted at the bugs that passed by them, investigating the living in a land of the dead. Butch kept his eyes almost closed, but his arms stayed stubbornly crossed. Brick just passed by, looking from one body to the next, and his back to his brothers - they couldn't see his expression.

Suddenly, one of the still bodies moved, reached up for them. It barely got half way there when Brick's eyes erupted with red fire, spearing the entire arm, and then narrowing as it melted it away from the periphery inwards. In a second, there was nothing left except a few wisps of dust and chips of bone.

Without another word, Brick flew up and over the crest of the mountain, past several still standing stone obelisks, closer to the other side of the Island. Butch felt a measure of apprehension at this, but the group stopped high over the peak of the active volcano. Down below, an indistinct shape, like living air, moved over the land. A few living creatures: dogged inhabitants of the Island, were fighting it. Some attacked with long bladed tentacles, others with beams from eyes or mouths. All did so in vain.

Brick snorted.

"Shouldn't we..." Boomer rethought what he was going to say. "Maybe we should help them..."

"Don't even think about it!" Brick turned on his brother, suddenly angry. Boomer flinched.

"S...Sorry..."

"No." Brick held up his hands to his forehead, like he had a headache. "No... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at ya like that."

"So what do we do?" Butch growled. He couldn't believe Brick had actually yelled at Boomer. It was totally unlike him. Sure, Brick occasionally raised his voice at his impulsive brunette brother, but never at Boomer.

"Damn it." Brick looked down at the exposed and smoking caldera far below them. "Butch... use your eye beams to blast part of the side of this volcano facing that thing. Boomer, you and I are going to mix things up a bit and blast out the inside of this baby."

Boomer quickly nodded.

"Gotcha," Butch agreed.

"Let's get this done, then." Brick looked sharply to Boomer, and the two dove right into the smoking bubbling cover of the volcano. As they did, Butch went to work blasting away at the side of it, cracking and pulverizing the earth. Deep in the magma, Boomer and Brick swirled the ultra-thick mineral mixture, and fired down at obstructions and clogs. The swim wasn't terribly harmful as long as they focused their power on resisting the transfer of thermal energy. Boomer had once compared the elementary tactic to a sort of skintight force field. The analogy wasn't totally accurate. Both boys could feel themselves moving through the molten mixture, and it was indeed in contact with their skin, but instinctively they knew how to dampen the amount of heat they absorbed.

Steadily, the magma began to churn with increased intensity. Great cracks down below vented angry gasses from many miles deep in the earth. Sensing things reaching a climax, Boomer and Brick silently nodded to each other and headed for the surface. Splashing from the angry surface they reunited with Butch, who was waiting for them.

"So?" He cracked a grin. "How was the lava today?"

"Not bad." Boomer motioned down at it. "We just turned on the jets. It's startin' to bubble up real nice."

"Let's get a little distance. See what develops." Brick led them off a few miles, and watched as the volcano exploded in a wave of flame and ash. The summit broke apart, especially on the side that Butch had weakened, and a torrential flow of pyroclastic material - fragments of glass, pumice, glass shards, ash and hot gasses - swept down at over a hundred miles an hour over the entire Island, putting it to the flame and sweeping away everything underfoot or into the sea. The water bubbled and steamed as the wave of ash crashed into it, and then again, as the entire Island was drowned in molten lava.

Around the boys, it rained ash and chunks of burning vulcanian rock.

"That should take care of that thing!" Butch smiled, but didn't add that it had also almost certainly killed what few surviving monsters were on Monster Island.

Brick gave Butch a questioning look, and then suddenly perked up. "Yeah. That should tie things up a bit!"

"So we're done here?" Boomer spoke up for the first time since Brick had snapped at him.

"Yeah. I think so." Brick seemed back to his normal self.

"When we get back to Townsville, I'm gonna crash 'El Cactus' again! Them's good burritos!" The black-haired Rowdyruff licked his lips at the mere thought.

"Burritos again?! Geez, man! All this hot sauce is gonna kill you one day!"

As Butch and Brick took off, Boomer followed them from behind. He gave one last look over his shoulder to the burning wreck that had once been Monster Island, but didn't keep very comfortable about what they'd done. What was that... thing... that they were fighting? Why had they been attacked in the first place? Brick had mentioned that Blossom's Girls had found the severed arm at the docks, and so he'd decided to check things out, but how did Brick even know the way there?

None of them had been there before, so it must have been something their leader picked up during his mysterious time 'alone' before he brought his brothers back or possibly from Mojo. Also, why did Brick want to destroy the whole Island? If he wanted to get to that thing that the Monsters were fighting, wouldn't they have headed directly for it, not taking time to check out the opposite side of the Island first? Brick hadn't even wanted to get near it.

To his horror, Boomer began to think that there was something serious Brick wasn't telling him. Something serious that he was keeping from his brothers. But that couldn't be. Brick was their leader, he was their brother, he'd brought them back from the dead, he'd organized their great return and victory over the Powerpuff Girls, and he'd gotten them everything they'd ever wanted. Sure, put a lot of stress on the guy, and he'll act like any other human being and get a bit short tempered, but still Boomer had a bad feeling that he couldn't quite pin down.

He shook his head and dismissed the notion.

Brick had done everything for them. He had put up with Mojo for Boomer's benefit, and tried to keep things there good, like Boomer had always wanted. The confrontation between Brick and Mojo days before had been proof enough of that. Hell, Brick was Butch's best friend as much as his brother. Brick was probably the only person on the planet Butch respected enough to take orders from. They were brothers. They were family.

Family.

Family.

* * *

Buttercup broke the surface and gasped for a clean, fresh breath of air.

"Ugh! Nothing!" She shook her head, droplets flying every which way.

"Blossom says keep looking." Bubbles was the only halfway dry member of the Powerpuff Girls. She was in the air, coordinating - an unusual role for her. She'd gone down into the ink black depths once, and absolutely refused to repeat the effort. Blossom had taken her place, so Bubbles took on the role of overseeing the whole effort, or at the least repeating Blossom's orders to Buttercup whenever she surfaced.

"I'm seriously getting tired of this! You tell Miss Obsessive-Compulsive that this is the last time! We've been out here for hours!" Buttercup took another deep breath and submerged.

Bubbles sighed and looked out over the open stretch of ocean. Far in the distance she could make out the higher buildings that defined the Townsville skyline. Normally she liked the water, and swimming, but the dark churning sea out here was nothing like the perfect tranquil blue of Townsville Lake. Here, the waves rolled endlessly, never really going anywhere, never really hitting anything... and it struck her and depressingly pointless. She'd never really thought about it, but the fact that most of the world's surface was a depressing expanse of rolling dark blue, hiding who knew what, was somewhat unnerving.

She wanted to go home.

But she also wanted to find the submarine and boat that had disappeared.

In the distance, she saw one of the many small frigates that had been called, just recently, into the area to coordinate their own search effort. There were even a few Navy Destroyers about. Blossom had responded to that fact cynically, still bitter that the city officials had kept information from her. Bubbles had been surprised too, and disappointed - didn't people trust them yet, after all they'd done for Townsville and the world? It seemed not. Buttercup took it the best.

"Big surprise there!" She'd said, about the whole thing. Bubbles wasn't sure if it was bravado, covering up her own sadness at the news, or if she honestly wasn't surprised that they still weren't trusted by everyone. Their experience in Citysville had had a negative effect on all of them, though perhaps none more so than Buttercup.

Down below and some distance off, Blossom emerged, shaking cold water from her hair. She broke the surface completely and started to rise. Bubbles took that as a sign that she'd given up the search, at least for the time being.

"Buttercup said that she was only going one more time. She wants to go home."

Bubbles watched as Blossom took off her bow and started wringing out her long hair. The Powerpuff leader didn't say anything, she just looked down at the water, as if the submarine would suddenly rise up and validate her going home. Needless to say, it didn't happen.

"Did you see anything interesting?" Bubbles asked, wanting Blossom to say something.

"Not a thing. It was pitch black." She carefully put her bow back on. "I didn't hear anything that sounded right either. Just... fish."

"No whales?"

"No whales," Blossom answered, sharply. The whole experience was starting to get to her. There were a lot of people on the USS Townsville, and Blossom was starting to feel responsible for letting them down. Bubbles didn't push the matter.

After a few minutes of pregnant silence, Buttercup broke the water.

"Nothing!" She said, repeating what she'd told Bubbles several times already. "Can we PLEASE go home now?"

"Yeah. We'll get back to this later..." Blossom started to frown. "Maybe when they give us a call and ask for help we'll be able to do something."

Buttercup quickly came to the same conclusion that Bubbles did.

The flight back to Townsville was a silent affair.

It was fairly late at night when the Hotline finally rang.

Blossom answered with even greater speed than normal. "Mayor? ...Nice to hear from you, too. What's the problem? ...What Museum? We're on it!"

It wasn't what she wanted to hear about, but it was something to do.

"Let's go!" Blossom turned to Buttercup and Bubbles and shot off out the windows and into the air. They flew with unusual gusto - this had been the first major robbery type situation in a while, and they were eager to flex some muscle and make a difference. It was showtime: time for Townsville to see that the Powerpuff Girls were back and ready to get down to business.

The Townsville Museum of Science and Technology wasn't normally a target for robbery, but tonight seemed to be the exception rather than the rule. There was a large black van parked in front, over several marble steps. Several thugs were firing sporadically at the police cordon that had surrounded them from behind the cover of the van's open doors.

The girls took care of them in a flash, swooping down and right into them.

It was child's play, literally, and the Girls took the opportunity to give a quick wave to the assembled police. Several people cheered. One person, high on a rooftop, watching the proceedings, did not.

Inside, the building was largely untouched.

It was on the third floor that the action was taking place.

"Boss! Sounds like trouble with a capital T!" One of the men, his assault rifle holstered and one finger to his left ear, listening, spoke.

"Which ones?" A man in white and black body armor said, his voice filtered and grainy. He carried no visible weapons, but one gauntleted hand was held up to a computer terminal, reading data at a rate faster than any human was capable of, and copying it into the computer that controlled and regulated the power armor that encased him.

"Dunno, sir." Another man, in fatigues, answered. "Izzy and Mark didn't exactly say much. Probably the Girls, though."

"I'm almost done here. Go down and distract them. The Girls won't hurt you... just play dead when they hit you."

"You got it, boss. Let's move!" The men locked and loaded their weapons and headed downstairs. In a few seconds, the sound of gunfire echoed in the open area of the Museum. When they were gone, the man under the visor of the armor slowly smiled.

"Got it." He drew his gauntleted hand back. "Soon we'll be ready to move."

"On who, Burnday?"

The Mercenary whirled at the voice. "You!"

"Yeah." Brick floated, arms crossed. "Me. I knew you were a hitman and a gun for hire, but I didn't think data theft was one of your special skills."

"You can thank Professor Utonium for that." The Mercenary took a few careful steps back and away from the red Rowdyruff.

"Who are you working for, Burnday?" Brick floated forward, voice menacing. "Tell me now. You remember the last time you tried fighting me, don't you?"

"How could I forget? I had to have the whole arm replaced."

"Then you won't do anything stupid like force me to do the same to the other one. ...Who hired you and to steal what?"

"Just downloading some porn, kid." In a single smooth motion, he pointed a hand at the terminal and fired, melting it into oblivion. Brick growled.

"Bad timing, pal: real bad." Brick surged forward. "You caught me in a very ...very ...bad ...mood."

* * *

Downstairs, the last of the hired muscle hit the ground.

"Do you hear that?" Blossom looked up, at a shadowed alcove on the third floor. It had sounded like voices, but she'd only caught the end of a conversation spoken very softly. She pointed and rallied her troops. "Up there!"

They raced up, just as a white and black form flew past them and down to the ground. A dark red streak of light followed it as the body hit the ground, rolled back, and onto two feet. Wide flaming blasts of blue poured from the figure that had fallen, but Brick evaded them and unloaded a haymaker at the figure, snapping the head back. The armor held, just barely, in time for the mercenary to try something new.

"Smile for the birdie, kid!"

Brick's eyes widened as a circular indentation in the armored man's chest glowed, for a quarter second, and then a beam of light engulfed him. Following it, a directed shockwave hit the stunned and surprised Rowdyruff, sending him flying up along the beam and into the sky as blasted and broken bits of the roof rained down like snow and ice in a hailstorm.

"That should keep him... woah!" The mercenary jumped to the side as something small, green and fast nearly pegged him. Buttercup carefully withdrew her fist from the hole it had made in the floor. Blossom and Bubbles flowed their sister, looking more than ready to try the same.

"Wait, wait wait! Girls!" The man held out his arms, his voice still sounding urgent even through the armor's filter. "I'm not your enemy!"

"You broke into the Museum. You're sure not our friend." Blossom advanced. The man quickly backed off.

"No, you don't understand! I am your friend! When I heard you were killed I was devastated! Your father, a great man, he made this armor for me... and a bunch of others. We were going to avenge you, try and bring down the tyrants that had tried to take your places!!"

"The Rowdyruff Boys?" Buttercup held back, curiosity overcoming bloodlust at least momentarily.

"Them!" The armored man nodded. "They've got this whole city under their thumb... We've got allies, and information! They're planning..."

A lance of red energy cut the man off as it bored into his left shoulder, sending him spinning and struggling to recover. The armor was of superb design, and the chemical X enhanced man wielding it a true professional, but under Brick's relentless assault there was no defense. In desperation, the man held up his arms to try and block the energy and delay the inevitable.

"You didn't think that would kill me, did you, Burnsday?" Brick slowly floated down from the hole in the roof, eye beams' blazing and beating down relentlessly. His body was smoking, his clothes torn, but he seemed mostly unharmed. "It's new, I'll admit that. ...But not enough! Even if your whole gang were here, it wouldn't be enough to stop me!!"

"Damn you..." The man writhed and fell backwards as his left arm, his mechanical arm, exploded in a spray of sparks and metal. "Killing me won't... stop things..."

"You think so?" Brick sneered, eyes still raining fire down on the man. "Let's find out!"

"Stop!" Blossom suddenly intervened, pushing Brick to the side and throwing his eyebeams off target. They streaked along the ground, carving a furrow of destruction, before he shut them off and faced her.

"What are you doing?!" Brick's face was still a cold sneer.

"What am I doing? What are you doing?! You were about to kill that man!"

"I still am!" Brick pushed her aside and tried to find his target. He found him being held up by Buttercup and Bubbles. His armor was smoking, and he looked unconscious, but obviously alive.

Brick hesitated.

"Since when do..." He started, but changed gears in mid sentence. He wasn't in a physically advantageous position anymore and he knew it. "That man is dangerous - an assassin. He's one of the hired guns that the Professor gave armor and Chemical X to so that they could try and kill my brothers and myself. I found him using his armor to hack data from a computer upstairs."

"What kind of data?" Blossom asked, but made she to keep between Brick and the beaten mercenary.

"I don't know. It could have been anything." Brick crossed his arms, defiantly. "Why are you protecting him?"

"Protecting people is what we do. You know that." Blossom chided. Brick's sneer deepened at her tone of voice.

"Are you lecturing me, Bloss?" His eyes flared, but didn't fire. It was obvious he was aiming at her, now. There was an instant of palpable tension; thick and heavy in the air like fog. Blossom looked, briefly, to her side, trying to gauge her sister's expressions. Thoughts conflicted with memories. Brick was outnumbered - he wouldn't start a fight with all three Powerpuffs. Probably. Then again, he had taken care of Buttercup without much trouble, maybe he could take all of them on and at least finish off his target before fleeing.

Her image of him, too, was in conflict. Brick was cold, dispassionate and reasoned. He was not one to act out of blind anger or rage, and yet here he was, ready to kill a man. How could someone so intelligent, so ...like her ...want to kill? Or maybe it was a bluff on his part, and he was overplaying the role to save face. Somehow, someway, after all the talks they'd had when she was their prisoner, she had developed a respect for him, even as an enemy. She didn't want to fight him. She didn't want to oppose him. She really didn't want a repeat of before.

"Brick..." She said, finally. "Do you really want to kill this guy?"

His look softened a fraction.

"...No." He blinked, and the energy to his gaze was gone. "No, I suppose not. His armor is ruined anyway... the data he got won't be accessible, and that's what matters."

The danger passed, at least for the moment. Bubbles and Buttercup left the unconscious mercenary by a pillar. The police would handle stripping the melted armor from his body and locking him up. Blossom floated closer to him, voice low.

"Were you bluffing, or..."

"Don't ask..." He answered with a quick grin. "For what you don't want to hear."

He turned around and was about to take off, when he felt someone come up next to him. He pivoted slightly, and was surprised to see Buttercup there instead of Blossom. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second before her fist lashed out at his jaw, only to be caught in his own formidable grip. He narrowed his eyes at her.

"Was that supposed to be a sucker punch?" He asked with a small smile.

"I want to know how to beat you." She pulled her arm back with a jerk.

He looked at her questioningly. "Why?"

"I want to be the best!" She said, standing tall. Or as tall as she could, anyway. "And I want you to help me."

"Why ask me?" He looked back over his shoulder and saw that Blossom and Bubbles were talking between themselves some distance away. "Why not Butch or Boomer or Blossom?"

"Butch fights like I do. Boomer doesn't fight like I want to." Her green eyes sparkled. "That leaves you."

"Or Blossom."

Buttercup shook her head. "She wouldn't. She'd want me to change completely. Not just how I fight, but who I am."

"So you came to me?" He turned away from her. "Sorry, girl. I've simply got better things to do."

In a bolt of red, he was gone.

"You're going to help me... whether you want to or not!" She followed, sped up, and intercepted him above the city. His smile was gone when she confronted him again. Mind set, she said nothing; she simply attacked. The exchange was brief, and ended with her face down in the concrete several hundred feet below. For a second time, she raced up and engaged him. Fists flying, she tried to peg him cleanly as he dodged and blocked, before finally flipping her down and onto the roof of a building with a tremendous crash. Again, she got up, and again she attacked. Over and over, as the fight continued, and the ended as it had before, with her on the ground: beaten.

And Brick standing over her like he had before. Untouched.

It came to Buttercup that he'd obviously been holding back with her before, because she had fought far more intelligently than she had previously against him, and the result had been the same. Slowly at first, the red Rowdyruff floated upwards, his eyes still downward set on her, before he took off in a trail of crimson light. Groaning, she got to her feet and limped home. Blossom had told her that asking him wouldn't work, so she had done it her own way. All the way home, she mentally replayed what she remembered of the fight.

She'd fare better tomorrow.

And if not, then the day after that.


	3. Gauntlet: Lies part 3

Like a good communist, I own nothing.

* * *

"Gauntlet: Lies"  
Part 3

* * *

May 8

Butch lost himself in his fury.

He'd built up a lot of it recently, and more than ever, it needed an outlet. Again, harder, he drove his fists into the tough surface of the punching bag. It gave, kept in place only by Boomer who stood behind it. If not for the blonde Rowdyruff, it would have soared into and through a nearby wall. Butch leaned back, breathing heavily. There was still energy, still anger, in him. He vowed to keep pushing, keep going, until he had again exhausted himself.

Then he would take a scalding hot shower; he would be cleansed and his mind cleared.

"Butch?" Boomer asked, breaking his brother's concentration.

Butch hit the bag again, and tried not to imagine it was someone's face. He tried so hard at that.

"What?" He took a second to reply, before striking again and again, harder and more savage with every blow.

"Do ya ever think about the girls?"

"What girls?" Butch played dumb.

"You know what girls." Boomer winced a bit as a hard kick to the bag almost sent him flying. Butch's strength always amazed Boomer, never more than when he saw his brother work out.

"Yeah. I suppose I do." Butch wiped some sweat from his brow.

"Is that a yes to... what girls, or do you think about them?"

"...Both, I guess. But not that often. They're Brick's pet project, not mine."

"I was just... wondering about why they're so different..."

"Whatdoya' mean different?" Butch attacked again, and the tough bag began to deform under the barrage.

"Like... you told us they see each other in their dreams sometimes. Why can't we do that?"

Butch thought about it for a second, though, really, not for the first time.

"They've been around longer. It didn't happen automatically, if I recall the story."

"I suppose that makes sense." Boomer looked a bit down in the dumps.

"Come on, that's sissy stuff anyway, you know that! YEA!" Butch seemed to revert into a feral rage for all of a few seconds before falling backwards, totally exhausted. Sweat trickled down his head, but he looked immeasurably content. Boomer was about to voice another, closer to home, concern that had been on his mind when the sound of footsteps caught his attention.

"Hey, pops." Butch spoke up first as Mojo walked in, looking like he always did.

"What's up?" Boomer asked, smiling. A little attention from their creator would be big lift after the last few days had left him doubting so many core things he'd come to depend on. Brick's odd departures and trips, Butch's intense training to the point of masochism... Mojo was no better, though, Boomer reminded himself. A bitterness mixed with hope: Mojo hadn't taken time to talk to them in days.

"Hello, my boys." He held his arms out. "How are you two today, that is to say: how have things been? Have you been causing any recent mischief?"

"Here and there." Boomer didn't mind when Mojo gave him a warm hug, though he pretended to. Their creator went to Butch next, lifting him off the floor.

"I just wanted to inform you of the fact that I am very proud of you boys. Very proud. Of all of Mojo Jojo's greatest creations, you are the very greatest, which is why I am most proud of you! It is because of this pride that I want to know what you have been up to recently. It is no secret that I have been busy, occupied, working on my most recent, second greatest, invention... it is almost complete, and I wish you boys to aid me in testing it!"

"Hey, sure! No problem!" Boomer was all smiles.

"Yeah. No sweat, pops," Butch seconded.

"Good." Mojo's smile broadened, revealing sharp simian teeth. "Get dressed. It would not be proper for the people of Townsville to see you unkempt, unruly, or improperly prepared for the occasion!"

Boomer suddenly got a bad feeling about this little outing. He had a hunch that Mojo wasn't implying anything along the lines of a fishing trip.

And where was Brick?

* * *

"Numerous land based search planes and helicopters from nearby Navy Destroyers were sent to comb the area where the tanker was last reported, but Coast Guard sources are not optimistic about finding any survivors. The loss of the 'Vanderhalt' represents the largest in a series of mysterious vessel disappearances on around the greater Townsville area and all its approaching sea-lanes. In addition to several million dollars worth of processed materials and equipment, over sixty..."

Blossom didn't normally listen to the news.

Most often, it lost its appeal when you were so often at the center of important events. Seeing things on the television or hearing them on the radio was a poor substitute for being there, and a poorer substitute for actually being involved. She listened today, however. She was not there. She had not been there. Not for the hundreds of people missing somewhere out at sea.

So she listened to the news during recess, and Miss Keane listened with her. Blossom hadn't known that her teacher even had a radio, much less that she had frequently turned it on whenever the Girls shot off to save the day. Perhaps she was living vicariously through her students. Perhaps she was just curious what those calls the Girls always got were about.

She'd never listened with anyone else, however.

"Hey! Look at that! A shooting star!" Bubbles suddenly yelled.

"Where?" A chorus of voices asked, as one. A dozen children looked up.

"I don't see any stupid shooting star!" Mitch growled. "Where is it?"

"Look! Right there!" Bubbles turned to Buttercup. "You see it, don't you?"

Buttercup sighed. She wasn't in the best shape after starting a fight with Brick last night, and was more interested in sleeping under a tree than some far off stellar phenomenon. Still, she opened her eyes and gave a cursory look over the clear blue sky. Sitting up a little more, her sensitive eyes focused on something high above them.

"Yeah. It's just a rock." Buttercup let out a deep breath and went back to relaxing. "You saw lots of them last time we went into space."

"It's not just a rock." Blossom felt the urge to correct and educate, no: enlighten her sisters. "It's a meteor, and could be metallic, icy, or rocky. I see it too, but with all this cloud cover I don't think anyone else will."

"Do you think it'll hit us, Miss Keane?" One of the other kids asked.

"Maybe it'll wack Townsville!" Mitch snickered. Another boy laughed at that.

"It isn't nearly as large as the last one." Miss Keane felt very odd saying that. 'Last one.' How often was a giant asteroid supposed to fall directly towards the city anyway? ...Then again, this WAS Townsville. "It should burn up before it gets close."

Not surprisingly, the Hotline rang.

"I'll get it!" Blossom rushed to answer the phone. So many things were vying for attention; she wondered which one the call was about. There were the disappearances at sea, the falling meteor, the ever-present danger of monster attacks, and even... "Mojo Jojo?!"

Blossom couldn't believe it. "Mayor, are you sure?" There was a moment's pause while he seemingly went to look outside. "Yes... yes, Mayor, that's what Mojo looks like. Ok. We'll handle it."

Mojo?

What was he thinking, actively wreaking havoc in Townsville?

Shaking her head and focusing her thoughts, she shot outside. "Bubbles, Buttercup! Let's go!"

Miss Keane watched the three take off.

Turning around, she saw her radio and smiled.

* * *

"Muwhahahaha!!" Mojo's voice resounded through the streets as he stomped another car into a pancake and kicked over a small building on his way to City Hall. He had vastly improved his Robo Jojo when his recent influx of funds and information. When he saw a lone red streak across the sky, he knew his quarry had come to face him. It would now, finally, be time to get his house in order.

"Mojo!" Brick yelled as he slowed down, stopping cold just meters away from the glass dome in which Mojo commanded his massive robot. "What, exactly, are you doing, pops?"

"What should have been done many days ago!" Mojo's voice boomed from his machine. "I'm taking over Townsville!!"

'From me,' Brick realized, silently.

Mojo's plan was a simple one, he saw. Mojo would go on a rampage, and Brick would be discredited and lose power and influence no matter the outcome. If he fought against Mojo, then he would be betraying the 'head' of the family, and it would be a legitimate reason for having Brick disgraced in front of his brothers. His leadership of the Rowdyruffs would suffer if he took a stand against Mojo, their creator, and their father. They'd also lose their home - The Observatory - that they'd worked so hard to return to. That he'd worked so hard to return to.

On the other hand, if he sided with Mojo, then he would lose the delicately maintained balance of fear and awe, and carefully built influence, that had been cultivated over the last week or so. He would also lose face by submitting to Mojo's authority. Do or do not do, he was going to pay for it.

Brick was honestly surprised Mojo hadn't tried it before. Most likely, he was in preparation in case Brick took the third option: He could kill Mojo, and in so doing take his place. It would be an act of succession, almost. It wouldn't be too hard, in theory. All he'd have to do is repeat what the Powerpuff Girls commonly did to Mojo, and not hold back at the end. Of course, Butch and Boomer would take it hard, but Brick was confident that his leadership would compensate, especially if it looked like an accident, and especially if it looked like it was Mojo's own fault.

There remained a problem with that, however.

Brick wanted Mojo alive. Regardless of his self-destructive criminal tendencies, extreme narcissism, and sadistic leanings, he was still a brilliant mind, and would likely come in handy in the future conflagration. So, in the long run, killing Mojo was far less attractive than it was in the short term. What, then, was he to do? Truly, he'd have been up the creek without a paddle... if not for the fact that he'd seen such an obvious tactic coming beforehand and planned for it.

Slowly, Brick smiled.

"Mojo Jojo... what kind of crazy off the wall scheme do you have cooked up now?" Brick looked around carefully and saw Butch and Boomer watching the proceedings carefully from a nearby rooftop. "Surely you're not going to just abduct the Mayor again, are you? That's hardly anything new, and frankly I don't think that many people would care."

"My Plans are only to be revealed to those I can trust! You are either with me or against me! There is no in between, there is no other choice, there is no middle ground! With or against! Against or with!"

"Against what? With what?" Brick stalled. "How can I be against a plan I know nothing of? All I see is you, in your crazy machine, smashing everything in sight like you've lost your mind."

At the controls of his Robo Jojo, Mojo began to get nervous and angry. He hadn't had an actual plan to take Townsville, beyond smashing some things and forcing a confrontation with his disrespectful protégé. He tried to come up with something on the fly, and fell back on old habits.

"Together, you must help me destroy the Powerpuff Girls! They must first fall before Townsville can be taken, and once they have, then the world shall be mine! I, Mojo Jojo, shall rule all the earth!!"

"If you were after the Powerpuff Girls, then why were you attacking the city and not the suburb where they live?"

Crazy?

Mojo's robot began to show his unease. Its massive hands clenched and unclenched. Mojo was losing self-control, and Brick knew the signs all too well.

Crazy?

Not making sense.

Not thinking rationally.

"Just tell me what you're thinking, please!" He pressed forward, his words sharp and biting. "You're not making any sense! You're not thinking rationally! Don't you have a plan of action for us to follow? You should have just asked me... I could have helped you think one up."

Crazy!

Smashing everything!

Lost your mind!

LOST YOUR MIND!!

"I have... had... enough of your back talk young man!!" The Robo Jojo's arm lashed out, a huge metal fist smashed into Brick's face and sent him flying. He hadn't even tried to dodge; he just went limp in midair, and on impact, sent half the Townsville City Hall's domed roof falling down on the Mayor and his staff.

"Brick!" Boomer rushed forward, past Mojo. On his heels, a green streak flew by as well.

Mojo's giant robot took a few steps back and away. He finally realized what he'd done, both to Brick, and to himself. Still, a measure of stubborn ego kept him from making any attempt at an apology or amends.

"Boy... That was for your own good..." His voice came out over the robot's speakers so clearly, carried emotion so tangibly, he could have been standing there, next to Boomer or Butch as they steadied Brick back on his feet. A long trickle of blood dripped down the red Rowdyruff's jaw, and he gently shook his brothers off, standing alone.

Through the gaping hole in City Hall, between two different worlds, Mojo and Brick's eyes met. Then, suddenly, three trails of light blue, green and pink plowed into the side of Mojo's Robo Jojo. The impact sent it stumbling. Its armor had been improved and reinforced, but it had also been hit unprepared. Almost as an afterthought, the robot's hands lashed out, trying to swat the tiny titans that were swarming it and pounding away at the heavy crystal dome from which Mojo commanded those around him. Maybe his heart wasn't into the fight, maybe he was simply out matched against the three Powerpuffs, maybe he was simply caught unprepared, regardless: the fight was brief.

"Curses!" Mojo crawled from the smashed dome. Buttercup had given him a hard right to the jaw, and Blossom had kicked him in the gut, but he was still mobile. Getting to his feet, he pulled out a small gun - an emergency sidearm - and fired at the three super powered girls. In seconds, despite his rolling and tumbling, in true John Woo action style, the gun was melted, and he took another painful blow to the jaw that sent him sprawling.

Looking up, he saw Blossom, fist cocked back, ready to finish the job and knock him out cold. She was stopped short when another red blur intercepted her fist, catching it just a few inches before it could find its mark. Brick stood over Mojo, one hand blocking Blossom's fist at the wrist.

"What are you doing?!" Blossom raged, her tone righteous.

She'd seen, Mojo instantly knew.

"What I have to." Brick forced her arm back. He didn't stand between Blossom and Mojo, but to the side, ready to intervene if need be. The irony of the role reversal came and went for both of them in an instant.

"I saw what he did to you!" She yelled. "He wrecked part of Townsville! How can you defend him?"

"He's my father," Brick answered, simply. 'And,' He almost wanted to add, 'When his time comes, it will be by my hand, not yours!'

"Your father...? He isn't your father! Just because someone made you, doesn't make them..." Her lips drew together tightly, not sure how much to say, how much Brick or his brothers wanted to hear. Butch and Boomer hadn't said anything, but they were behind their brother. They would follow his lead - never more so than now.

"Go home, Bloss." Brick wiped some fresh blood from his lip with the back of his hand.

"I... "She looked over her shoulder at her sisters, looking for some sort of support for staying and getting involved. Bubbles was unreadable: maybe just confused at what was going on. Buttercup had her arms crossed and was looking away. It was obvious she didn't feel comfortable with what had happened, and thus had decided to try and ignore it. Blossom turned back to Brick. He hadn't moved a muscle.

"Sometimes... you should listen to other people." She said to him, softly. "It'll make you a better person."

He was silent.

"It ...It did for me." She turned away, and took off. Buttercup and Bubbles followed.

"Boomer. Butch. Help Mojo up." Brick's words were cold, commanding. Neither of his brothers argued. They carefully lifted their creator by the shoulders and headed home, Brick leading the way. Looking up at the sky, Brick's eyes narrowed in recognition.

That Mojo had bad timing was of no doubt.

The next One was almost here.

* * *

It did not have intelligence as the word was conventionally thought of. It did, however, have goals and desire, and the means to implement them. As it descended towards the lights below, something inside began to churn in preparation. The energies of death were strong here, and somewhere primal, it recognized the tastes.

The shooting star plunged through the atmosphere, and with a great crash made footfall in an old basketball court. Hitting at an angle, the asphalt was shattered and broken, and a gaping furrow was split into the ground, past the basketball court's fence and into the nearby street, stopping near a parked car and tearing it nearly in half.

"Is everyone ok? Is anyone hurt?" The words weren't so surprising, but that they had come from a dog of all things was, so at first no one answered. Talking Dog frowned at that, and repeated the question more firmly.

"Yeah." "Fine." "What was that?" "My CAR!!"

Talking Dog sighed at that and yelled at the man as he approached the ruined wreck of a car, now in flames. "Hey! Stay back!"

Just as the word's left the dog's mouth, the fire caught the car's supply of gas, and the whole thing erupted in a fireball. The owner was thrown back by the blast onto his back, where he rolled to a stop at an old woman's feet (was that old woman everywhere?). The growing group of people, began to mutter and panic. Talking Dog ran up to the body, and put a paw over the man's open mouth, checking for breath.

"He's still breathing!" TD looked through the crowd. "Doesn't anyone have a cell phone? We need a doctor here!"

TD almost snarled at the people as they began to mutter and talk. As always, they were unprepared. Finally, a man in a business suit ran up, a cellular phone in hand. "I've got one! What do I do?!"

"CALL 911, what do you think?!"

"Oh. ...Ok." The man shied back from the dog. Obviously, he wasn't used to being yelled at by one. He started punching buttons when the ground began to shake and crack. Feeling a rush of goose bumps down his spine, Talking Dog slowly looked behind him, at the broken remains of the car. Something long and black was rising straight up into the air from the hole in the ground. Higher and higher it rose, as the assembled people of Townsville, as one, grew deathly silent.

Then, with a shower of debris, the ground exploded and something huge began to rise out of the destroyed street. It was uneven and pitted by small craters, all of which started to slowly leak some sort of white liquid. From the uneven mass, high in the air, the black pillar broke apart into seven branches, so massive that they seemed to stretch to the horizon.

It smelt like... blood.

"Get out of here! Run! Run you idiots!" TD's words stirred the people, and like an expanding group mind, they panicked and started to run. As the black mass rose higher into the air, finally breaking free of the ground entirely, TD clamped his jaws down on the injured man's shirt and tried to drag him out of the way. Bits of rock and street fell down all around them, but it was when TD saw a droplet of white hit a fallen cell phone... and melt it into a puddle of amorphous goo... that he really started to panic. Fear overcame pride, and he yelled, desperately, for the only help he'd ever come to depend on.

"POWERPUFF GIRLS!! HELP!!"

Avoiding being hit by one of the droplets of acid, TD struggled harder, pulling the heavy man out of what was left of the street. He'd always wanted to be a bigger dog, and never more so than at that moment. Size-wise, Lassie he was not. To his side, a drop of acid hit the street, smelling sharply of copper and blood and... something else he couldn't quite place. He wasn't going to make it, he realized, looking to the far off shelter of a store overhang and the open door beneath it.

Up above, the growing uneven shape rose higher into the air, long spindle legs supporting it as it cast a long shadow down over Townsville, straddling the entire city like a god. It had no eyes, no mouth, only a pitted mess of a body and seven legs, each nearly two miles long. Talking Dog had, over his short life, seen many great and terrible things come to Townsville. The last creature, a sphere type thing, had looked odd, but not particularly terrifying. It hadn't even done much damage. But this... something about this monster, the inhumanity of it perhaps, the white droplets that rained down on the city, burning and destroying, almost as an after thought...

He opened his mouth to scream when a streak of bright blue caught him and pulled him out of danger. He blinked, and the moment was over. He and the injured man were safely under the overhang, at least for the moment. He saw Bubbles's face and relaxed.

"You're safe now, doggie!" She gave him a big hug, causing his eyes to expand as his body was crushed.

"Er... Bubbles... nice... see you... too..."

"Maybe you should put him down?" Buttercup was scowling. Like always.

"What's going on?" Blossom asked. "Where did that thing come from?"

Talking Dog took a deep breath when Bubbles let go of him and put him down on the floor. "Something crashed... a meteorite I think..."

"That stupid shooting star!" Buttercup balled her fists.

"It's dripping some sort of acid everywhere!" He added.

"Well, that's not too bad." Blossom smiled, confidently. "Acid can't hurt us!"

Buttercup didn't need any other news. She just took off, leading the charge. Bubbles and Blossom saw her go, frowned, and followed closely. They took off out the store and into the air, weaving through the ever-increasing rain of white droplets. Getting closer and closer, the inevitable happened, and Buttercup felt the mild sting of one of the drops hitting her right arm.

A second later, she screamed.

"It burns! It burns! It burns!!" She howled, falling backwards, patting her arm and shaking it wildly.

"But that's impossible!" Blossom remembered well when a disgruntled policeman had dipped them in a vat of acid. Their clothes had been shredded, and they had been a mild stinging sensation, but no real harm done. Then a droplet hit her hand, and she felt searing pain flare across every nerve in her arm, flooding her brain. Gritting her teeth, and patting her hand desperately, she knew they'd gotten themselves into trouble making that assumption.

"Don't get hit! Evasive maneuvers!"

"Oh GOD, it hurts! My arm! My ARM!!"

Buttercup was in her own private world of pain. Amazingly, it was Bubbles that caught her and weaved through the thick white rain. Getting out of the shower directly beneath the body of the thing, Bubbles was still holding Buttercup while the green Powerpuff nursed her wounded arm. Blossom's hand still hurt like it never had before, but she could feel it rapidly healing.

"The city..." Bubbles said, quietly. It was like her nightmares. A black spider, like a daddy-longlegs that was titanic beyond belief, standing over the city, raining death and destruction. She felt a rising panic. If this nightmare was real, then perhaps others she had seen, others far worse... creeping through every vein, wanting to be one, invading her mind...

"We have to do something!" She squeaked. "Blast it with our eye beams or something!"

"There could be thousands of gallons of that acid stuff in it!" Blossom actually sounded afraid. "Even in the legs! If we cut it open, it'll spill all over Townsville!"

She didn't say it, but she had no idea what to do.


	4. Gauntlet: Lies part 4

Like a good communist, I own nothing.

* * *

"Gauntlet: Lies"  
Part 4

* * *

May 8

"Cross pattern! Strong green! Boomer- Cover fire! Move! Now!"

Butch felt the song of war ring in his ears. Brick's words provided only rough direction; Butch heeded first and foremost the calling of his blood. The world around them was a blur as they flew towards their target. Standing over the city like a colossus was some sort of spider like creature, mottled and pitted black across what passed for its rocky body and long spindle legs. Across its surface, a thin film of pale white slime flowed and dropped down onto the city.

The hissing he heard from below was a warning that went unheeded.

Fist forward, he attacked the body from above while Brick circled around to flank. The substance was like rough hewn rock or concrete, yet remarkably strong. Still, against Butch's power, even it buckled with a spray of white goo. Pulling back for another blow, he suddenly felt searing pain cut into him like a knife.

Pulling back with a pop of displaced air, Butch looked down at his arms and hands. The white slime was some sort of acid... and it was eating into him. He could see the flakes of skin falling off through the red hazy of agony. Roaring, he was about to open fire with his eye beams when a voice interrupted him.

"STOP!"

It wasn't Brick, and it wasn't Boomer, so Butch ignored it. Red fire danced from his narrowed eyes and cut into the material with a wet splatter, releasing a small fountain of white blood. Butch laughed.

"That's it! Burn you mother..."

"I said: STOP!" Something grabbed him from behind, and threw off his aim. He blinked, terminating the flow of energy, and spun around.

"Who..." Butch sneered at Blossom and pushed her back. "The Pink Puff? What the HELL are you doing getting in my way?"

"Damn it!" Brick yelled from above. "Boomer, stop firing! Butch, regroup behind the sun!"

Butch looked in the direction of his leader's voice, back to Blossom, and then headed off at top speed. He headed for the sun, using it as cover behind them for their next attack. It apparently didn't matter to Brick that the spider creature didn't have any eyes.

"What's the problem, Bossman?" Butch's whole body still hurt, but he'd come to like a little pain. It did the body good. It purified the mind.

"Yeah?" Boomer asked. "We were about to cut that thing to ribbons!"

"It's leaking acid all over the place." Brick held his hand, and the two brothers noticed that it had gotten caught by some of the stuff too.

"Dude!" Boomer floated forward, and then noticed that Butch was hurt even worse. "What happened to you guys? Acid..."

"Can't hurt us?" Another voice continued. In three flashes of lights, the Powerpuff Girls met their counterparts. Blossom came forward. "Apparently it can."

Brick's frown deepened. "Antidote X..."

"Antidote X?" Boomer questioned. "What the hell is Antidote X?"

"An inhibiter for Chemical X." Brick blew over his hand, and saw that the wound was quickly healing. "Chemical X is a unique form of weak base. Antidote X is a unique form of weak acid. They neutralize each other... at least until our bodies produce more."

"How... do you know that?" Blossom looked down at his hand.

"It was one of several weapons your father could have used against us. Of course I would become familiar with it." Brick's tone was controlled, but Boomer again got the feeling that he was hiding something from them. Most likely it was because the Girls were there.

"I... guess that makes sense..." Blossom shook her head, getting back to the point at hand. "We can't attack it head on."

"And we can't blast it from a distance. Not with it over the city like this," Brick said, finishing.

"The legs!" Buttercup gasped, in revelation. "We could throw it..."

"The legs are covered with that acid stuff. You'll lose your hands, never mind how huge and ungainly that thing is, they'd probably break off before you could toss it." Butch made a fist and winced. "Damn it... Lemme guess, Green eyes, you rushed right in, huh?"

Buttercup nodded, nursing her own wounds.

"Water! Water is an acid and a base. We wash it off, then we can..." Blossom stopped when Brick shook his head.

"It would just leak more." He pointed from one leg to another, a span of over four miles. "Plus that would require a huge amount of water. We'd drown everyone in the city doing it."

"Freeze it...?"

"Wouldn't change its chemical composition. That'll just break it into shards. Besides, we only need to kill the core."

"Core?"

"The living core." Brick sighed. "Normally it's in the center... but this thing isn't symmetrical. It could be anywhere in the main body. No. There's no way to keep this clean."

Blossom was about to suggest something else when Brick held up his hand.

"I've got a plan." He pointed to Boomer. "Boomer, take Bubbles and clear the area down below. Butch, Buttercup, cut a hole underneath the main body. We'll handle filling it with water. We'll then start striking at the body."

No one moved.

"Now!" He yelled, eyes blazing. Boomer and Bubbles didn't need much pushing - they headed down to get people out of the area. Butch and Buttercup didn't seem happy, however. The former because he wanted an actual fight, and the latter because she didn't like taking orders, and liked taking orders even less from someone she didn't like. Brick, however, didn't give a damn. His gaze cut into them; it only took a second for Butch to realize he didn't have a better idea, and Buttercup to realize that there was a lot more at stake than her pride.

She had resolved never again to put her pride before the welfare of others, and she would not do so here. Closing her eyes, not wanting to see his, she nodded. "Fine."

"Yeah, ok." Butch similarly agreed, and the two headed down to start blasting away and forming a crater under the creature.

Blossom, however, was furious. And confused. She had allowed Brick to take command, both of her, and of the team. She was more experienced, and she had her own pride, and yet... she had come up short on ideas when Brick hadn't. She had questioned herself, and Brick hadn't. She had, ultimately, backed down and allowed him to take control. Naturally she was angry with him, but more to the point, she was angry with herself.

"Follow me." He told her. It was a statement - a command. She wanted to find a reason to argue with him, to make him follow her, or at least respect her enough to ask for help instead of demanding it.

But she came up short.

Besides, she told herself, now was not the time for it.

"This is a waste of my time and energy!" Butch's eye beam pulsed brighter, and down below flecks of concrete and asphalt vaporized. He and Buttercup were circling carefully at low level, while keeping away from the bulk of the raining acid. Together, they'd carved a wide crater into the ground, even though it meant demolishing two buildings and a parking lot to do so. Amid the drops of deadly liquid, twin blue streaks: Boomer and Bubbles, darted in and out of buildings, getting people out of the general area. Most were holed up in their offices or homes and needed to be moved one or two at a time.

"Ah, shut up and keep blasting! You think I like doing this either?" Buttercup was similarly annoyed, though for her own reasons. Butch was someone she could relate to, and under his roughness there was an innate goodness that had kept her sane when she was separated from her sisters. Boomer, she wasn't nearly as familiar with, but he seemed the most amicable of the Rowdyruff Boys. Brick, however, was something else entirely. He had defeated her, he had refused to help her get better, he bossed everyone around more than Blossom ever did, and something about him struck her as horribly unfeeling. Even at her most cruel, Buttercup could revel in her emotions, even if they were anger. But when she had fought with Brick, there was no passion to him, only cold condescension.

"So..." Butch blinked, and gave his eyes a brief rest. "What's up, Green eyes? What've you girls been upta?"

"Why do you care?"

"Don't really." Butch shrugged. "Just makin' conversation."

"We've been catching up with school."

"Catching up...?" Butch paused. "Oh yeah. You missed a whole week, didn't ya?"

"Thanks to you idiots!" Buttercup growled, and decided to take a quick break, letting her vision clear. When she did, Butch's eyes blazed and he continued where she left off.

"Don't you guys have to go to school?" She asked, the thought just now occurring to her.

"School?!" Butch started to laugh. "You gotta be kiddin' me! Why would we go to school?"

Buttercup gritted her teeth in frustration.

"Gee, I dunno." She rolled her eyes. "You tell me."

"Listen: Rowdyruffs go where they want and do what they want. And I sure don't want to go to school." Butch snorted. "What are they gonna do: risk leveling the whole city tryin' to take me out just to send one kid to school? As if!"

"It... It isn't the most fun in the world," Buttercup admitted. She wasn't sure whether what she was hearing was really great or really sad. "But everyone goes..."

"Yeah? Well you just met the exception to the rule." Butch crossed his arms, and his eye beams stopped again. "Looks like we're done here. You healin' up all right?"

"It was just my arm." Buttcerup rubbed the spot. It felt dry and sensitive, but it had healed over. "Hey, Butch?"

"What?" He sounded impatient.

She cut right to the point. "Do you train with Brick?"

"Yeah." He nodded slowly. "All the time. I train with him and Boomer. Why?"

"I... I kind of asked him to help me get better." She looked down at her feet, embarrassed. She couldn't believe she'd asked for help, or that she was now telling someone that she had. But, deep down, she knew that out of everyone Butch would understand the situation best. He'd already seen her as her absolute lowest point in life. She didn't have anything to hide that was worse than what he'd already seen.

"You actually asked Brick to give you some pointers?!" Butch smiled at that. "He said no, didn't he? Listen, Green eyes, there's something ya need to understand about him. Brick ain't exactly very eager to help people."

"I noticed." Buttcerup looked up at him. "I was planning on just attacking him every day or so... pick up stuff first hand."

"A pretty ballsy way of going at it," Butch said, amused. "Only real tip I can give ya is to be unpredictable. If he sees ya comin' there ain't a lot ya can do."

"You've... Never...?"

"Beaten him?" Butch's smile faded a little. "I've come close a bunch of times, mostly 'cause I'm stronger 'n tougher."

"Is that why you take orders from him? Because..."

"No!" Butch cut her off before she could ask what he didn't want to hear. "I follow him because he knows what he's doing. Because he saved me and Boomer."

"Saved...?" Buttercup trailed off when she saw Brick and Blossom flying their way. Each carried a large block of ice. It was too risky sending Blossom in by herself to freeze over the area so that they could melt it, so they'd had to make the ice elsewhere and throw it into the crater, one massive block after another. Buttercup never got to finish her question: Butch had already taken off and started helping fill their puff/ruff-made lake in the center of the city. Boomer and Bubbles soon joined in, melting the ice with eye beams, until the lake hissed and boiled.

"All right!" Brick shook his fist as everything started to come together. "Now, everyone, focus on the main body and..."

The earth shook.

With the sound of footfalls.

"Um..." Bubbles pointed up at the thing. "Brick... it's moving..."

Brick could only watch as one, then two, and then another massive leg lifted into the air. The creature was shifting position, crushing whole buildings under its huge spider feet, raining destruction on another section of the city. Brick's lower lip moved when he realized his mistake: destroying the area under it had meant that, of course, it would move onto another target!

"Un... unbelievable!" Brick growled, and instantly realized something else: it was headed in their direction. "SCATTER!!"

A side of the walking monstrosity seemed to face them specifically, and without warning a geyser of white acidic slime was headed in their direction. Behind him, he could see that the group was still aghast: still in shock that it had moved at all when it hadn't before. Still in shock that it had fired at them, when it hadn't before. Butch and Buttercup, perhaps more used to thinking on their feet, managed to rush away in a flash of green, but the others weren't going to make it.

"God... damn... this!" Brick inhaled deeply, hands forward. As he did, red crackles of energy danced between his arms and hands, like two tesla coils exchanging lightning. With a yell, Brick's special power flexed itself, and a rolling wave of fire: an inferno to rival the pits of hell itself, tunneled out from his mouth and between his arms and hands, directed and confined into a tight spiral. It hit the fountain of white blood head on, immolating it.

But not completely.

Brick grunted as a burning mass, pressed ever forward my momentum alone, broke through the column of fire and into his torso. It felt dull, but not terribly painful, like being hit by a basketball in the chest. He was starting to wonder what it was, when the scouring all consuming throes finally registered. Amid the flames, Brick felt himself blown back and down to the ground. The impact, however, was barely felt. Nothing seemed to matter or remain comprehensible through the blazing red that had become his new universe.

"Holy...!" Boomer spun around, raced down after his brother. Blossom and Bubbles scattered. Brick's attack had bought them only a moment's reprieve. The spider thing seemed to be on the warpath, spewing white death at anything that flew.

"BRICK!" Blossom yelled down. She could see his prone form in a pile of broken glass that had once been a store window. "Bubbles! Douse him with water! Hurry!"

Bubbles nodded once affirmative, and shot off like a bullet.

"What..." Butch pulled up next to her. "What the hell happened?!"

"Brick's... Brick's down." Blossom pointed to Buttercup, and she quickly came to her. "The thing is still after us. That means we lead it out of Townsville! Try and intercept any of its attacks with your own!"

"Hey!" Butch pushed her, hard. "Who put you in charge?! I say we smash the damn thing while we can and to hell with the city!"

"To what with the city?!" Blossom felt a surge of indignation and anger boil up, far greater than it had before. She pushed him back. "How can you even say that?"

"Don't push me!" Butch pushed her back, even harder, almost sending her flying. She barely held her ground against the Rowdyruff. "To hell with this city, and to hell with you!"

Butch reveled: plans had failed. It was time for action, bloody bold action. Time to heed the clarion call to arms that raced through his veins! Time to raise hell! He held up his arms, shaking and boiling with power, threatening to overflow. A green glow enveloped him, supercharging him to an extreme. It was the Final Attack of the Rowdyruff Boys, the one that they had used to defeat the Powerpuff Girls the first time they'd fought. Buttercup's eyes widened at seeing it again.

With a loud war cry, Butch charged right into the heart of the beast. Red optic blasts and green energy fire from his hands heralded his bull rush, but given the torrent of white poison death thrown at him, even that would not stop it all. Butch felt none of it; the pain was like a memory, like a distant memory. Forward, ever forward, until again he met the creature, and the blows poured down without mercy or hesitation.

"That idiot!" Blossom was shaking with rage. "Buttercup! With me! Blast the acid before it can hit anything! It's up to us!"

"And me!" Boomer rushed up. "I'm with ya, Red."

"Me too!" Bubbles came in from the side. She looked like... Blossom didn't want to even speculate on what she'd seen. Or what she was thinking.

"Good. Go!"

With that, they were off. While they went to work, Butch lost himself in his berserker rage. To the green Rowdyruff, there was nothing more or less to existence than the destruction of what was in front of him. Still, his blows were calculated and measured. There was no pain, only the high of honest to god battle. White sprays erupted from where he'd hit his target, but Butch kept moving, constantly, avoiding most of the spray before it could hit him.

Gradually, he lost track of time, until, with a sudden movement, the black mass shifted. He barely saw it, but the base of one leg, so huge as to obscure everything else from sight, plowed into him. Next thing he knew, he'd hit the water, though at his speed, it felt more like solid concrete.

"No! Butch is down!" Blossom was breathing heavily. Her eyes watered and hurt from firing so often and so quickly. During Butch's attack, they had managed to keep most of the resulting spilt white blood from actually hitting the ground and causing more damage and death, but it hadn't been easy. Blossom was already starting to feel low on energy, and in all likelihood, Buttercup, Bubbles and Boomer were in similar condition. Oddly, she didn't feel under that much stress anymore: it was like she was running on automatic.

"We need to end this quickly!" Blossom took a second to think something up. "Ok, Boomer, Bubbles! Take the two legs closest to you..."

"But..." Bubbles started.

"You have to, Bubbles. It'll only hurt for a little while!" Blossom pointed to the two legs. "Pull them out of position, and it'll fall backwards towards the center of the city! Buttercup... you take the leg on the other side. When it's down, I'll freeze it in place and try and take it out!"

"Right!" "Gotcha!" "I'm on it!"

Blossom watched them go with rising anxiety. Floating higher, she concentrated her power, tried to focus it. A little more was all she needed: a little more and a lot of luck. A headache suddenly hit her, but she quickly shook her head, clearing the cobwebs. Focus! Focus!

She saw Bubbles and Boomer get to their targets first. Each grabbed onto the leg in question, and began to push it out of alignment. She heard Bubbles scream from the pain - each leg was dripping with that damn white acid - but Bubbles kept at it: she was tough when she needed to be, of that there was no doubt. Boomer wasn't yelling, but she knew he was in the same boat. Much further away, Buttercup rammed into her target with fury, and the towering spider creature's body began to waver and lose balance.

With a resounding crash, several buildings were smashed as Bubbles and Boomer's target legs lost footing and slipped. Buttercup's just shot out akimbo. The other four of the seven legs responded, trying to steady the main torso, but it wasn't enough. The dripping black and white uneven hulk that passed for its body tumbled back and then fell straight down, skidding, almost like it was slippery, down the side of an already partially melted building through a courtyard, and into the water filled crater she had been aiming for.

Closer and closer she flew, and then when in range, Blossom let loose with a great blast of her ice breath. Moisture began to freeze over, and in seconds the whole lake, and the monster's body, were encased in a layer of ice. The massive miles long legs still moved, however and the ice was quickly beginning to crack from the pressure. Blossom's face was an angry snarl, and with every last bit of energy and concentration, she fired her eye beams, holding back not a fraction of a fraction. The layer of ice where she attacked vaporized instantly, and beneath it, the body of the creature writhed and struggled.

"No..." She whispered, softly, only to herself and her enemy. "I won't let you win... I won't... I WON'T!!"

Her beam seemed to double in strength, cutting the creature to the heart. Layer after layer melted away, gallons of blood hissed and spat and spilled, but was neutralized by the water that surrounded the nearly immobilized monster. Finally, through the blood haze, through the layers of muscle and alien tissue, Blossom saw something pure and solid. Somehow, though she had no way to prove it, she knew it was the core that Brick had mentioned. She pressed her beam for more energy, to do more damage, but came up empty.

Her reserves depleted, Blossom felt herself slowly fall to the earth, totally spent. Struggling just to keep floating, she tried to fire again, but it was like squeezing a stone for water. She looked around for Boomer or Bubbles or Buttercup, but realized they'd probably be passed out somewhere from the agony they'd been through. The agony she'd put them through. The agony they'd endured, for her, for her plans, because of her guidance.

"I won't... I won't let you win..." She somehow kept floating. There was only a spark of energy left: her life. It was the ultimate sacrifice. It was also one she was willing to make. To save her sisters, to save Townsville, to save herself and affirm what she was... Maybe, in her death, Brick would see that he'd been wrong. Maybe she did 'rule' Townsville. Maybe she did revel in the control and the glory... but what separated a Tyrant from a Leader was what she was about to do...

"Hey..." She heard a strained voice from behind. Slowly, she turned, recognizing the voice. Butch smirked, his green eyes glittering like ferocious ethereal fire. He gave her a quick look. "Hey babe, mind if I join the party...?"

He gulped, hard, and faced the prone creature. Over his head, Butch held the creaking burden that was an entire US Navy Arleigh Burke class Destroyer, plucked right out of the water, its crew wisely jumping ship when it suddenly started to fly into the air. Seawater ran down Butch's scarred arms and face.

"Happy birthday, ya son of a bitch!" With a mighty heave, he threw the massive vessel down, at the exposed core of the monster. "I got a present for ya!!"

In almost slow motion, the keel of the ship tore into the core. The whole ship buckled and bent from the impact, and then the munitions on board, crushed and compacted, added a fiery maelstrom to the mix. In seconds, there was nothing to be seen except a settling cloud of black ash and a maze of twisted steel sticking out of what used to be the spider monster's freakish and deformed body. The long legs, unmoving, were mute testament to the victory.

"Hell... yeah... I killed you..." Butch's eyes rolled up into his skull, and he fell limply forward. Blossom barely caught him before he hit the ground. High above them, almost mercifully, it began to rain.

As the cool drops of water hit her face, Blossom smiled.

They'd won.

She'd won.

Redemption!


	5. Gauntlet: Lies part 5

Like a good communist, I own nothing.

* * *

"Gauntlet: Lies"  
Part 5

* * *

May 9

Mojo Jojo heard the footsteps coming.

He had ample time to prepare.

In the heart of his most favorite Lab, his robotics facility, he waited and meditated on his current situation, as he always did when a plan failed to come together. He thought back first to the relatively few memories he had in what passed for his childhood - before he had gained sentience and newfound genius in the same accident that had created his greatest enemies, the Powerpuff Girls.

It was a period not so much of thought and memory, but of emotion. But in what few remembrances Mojo had from that time, Professor Johnathan Utonium was paramount. Why Mojo was kept by the Professor, he did not know - it was not for experimentation, it was not for any form of technical assistance in the lab, rather Mojo suspected it was because the Professor wanted someone or something around. He wanted affection, perhaps, and Mojo knew he repaid that need with misbehavior. Maybe, on the times Mojo thought back to it, he had simply not been disciplined. The Professor had, ultimately, been a poor model...

Mojo had run amuck.

Mojo had been bad.

Mojo had been a failure, and like all failures, he had been cast aside and replaced by something better, newer, more worthy. He hated Professor Utonium. He hated him for being smarter, for being more successful in his meaningless little life than Mojo had in his grand pursuits. He hated him for creating the girls, for replacing him... even if he had deserved it.

Such was the law of survival.

Sentience altered the rules slightly, but the dictates remained: 'Out with the old.'

Brick's slow measures footsteps heralded his entrance into the facility.

'In with the new.'

Seeing him, Mojo remembered when he'd first seen his greatest creations: in that respect, at least, he had truly surpassed Professor Utonium. His creations were greater than their creator. His weapons had minds of their own, cunning, ruthless... They would not be dominated, and that was the one thing Mojo had not anticipated when he created the Rowdyruff Boys. They were not automatons, they would not be programmed, they would not be wielded, but would wield themselves how they saw fit. Pandora's box had been opened.

Opened, and blown to pieces.

Nearby, Brick found the Lab's radio on a quiet classical station - it normally helped Mojo concentrate. The red Rowdyruff turned up the volume dramatically, drowning out most noise and making it more difficult to hear. He obviously wanted what was to happen to not be heard outside.

Mojo Jojo, however, had not thought of such things on that day, when, at the height of a 'lucky' dark incantation, he had mixed the needed ingredients, and born witness to the results of his labor. Three boys, in many ways like the Powerpuff Girls, but reeking of malevolence and aggression: living weapons of anger and power. They needed only a small pushing of direction, only a minor persuasion. They had effortlessly broken him out of jail and returned him to his Observatory, where he had filled them in on a great many things they would need to know. Then, too soon, they had been off.

He had worried.

They were unproven, untested, unseasoned.

They were, in the very meaning of the word, 'raw.'

And yet, as he watched the fight degenerate into a grand melee, Mojo Jojo felt his heart rise at his success. The Girls were steadily losing, steadily falling towards the fight's inevitable end, and he didn't have to lift a finger to do it. It was perfect. It seemed flawless. Then... and Mojo would hardly have believed it had he not seen it with his own eyes... the Girls had been crushed. His boys returned.

He had greeted them, still not really believing what had happened.

So he had looked again.

The Powerpuffs were defeated.

For a brief moment in time, he had won. Mojo Jojo was not the old, not to be cast aside, he was, once again, supreme. He was validated! Better still, he had revenge, for Professor Utonium now had nothing, and he, Jojo, the rejected, had everything! He realized, in hindsight, that he had not been so proud of the boys, but rather proud of himself.

That would return to haunt him.

"You underestimated me, father..." Brick was still slowly walking, almost pacing, in a wide circle around his creator. Brick was bandaged and still hurt from the battle he'd endured late yesterday, but there was no mistaking the cold intensity to his eyes and the confidence with which he carried himself. A wounded animal was often the most dangerous.

Mojo said nothing.

"You think... maybe... that I protected you from Blossom so I could deal with you myself?" Brick's pace increased, and the slow circle started to shrink. "I assure you, I have no qualms about letting others bloody their hands for me."

"So do it." Mojo was hurting himself from the blows the Powerpuff Girls had delivered on that same day. "But do it quickly, not slowly, for I do not deserve that. I have not been unkind to you, to your brothers..."

"You've been an ample role model, father." Brick was right behind him when he spoke, very close. Mojo stood ramrod straight, ready to face evolution's cruel dictates.

"Sit down, pops!" Brick grabbed him roughly, and forced him into a chair. "I must say, I've very disappointed that you chose to confront me on such a hectic day. I'm also disappointed that you thought so little of me that you assumed I wouldn't have anticipated it. No matter. What's done is done. There is a passage from the Bible: 'Honor thy mother and thy father.' I find the notion very quaint in my circumstances."

Mojo realized he'd been holding his breath, and let it out, relaxing slightly.

Brick adjusted his red cap. "You're no fool either, despite what you lack in common sense." He leaned in close behind Mojo, voice level and cool. "I heard on the grapevine that a certain group of mercenaries have resurfaced, better armed than before. But they couldn't do so alone, not without Professor Utonium aiding them, which he is not. Maybe, oh mien papa, you could enlighten me?"

"I do not know what..."

"What a piece of work is a man!" Brick cut Mojo off, and walked in front of him, arms in the air. "How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!"

Brick looked Mojo straight in the eye.

"The paragon of animals..." He repeated. "What does that make me? A clockwork amalgam of ingredients given life... No, I prefer not to think of it in such ways. Am I 'man,' Father? Or am I... a monster...? Do you want to find out?"

Involuntarily, Mojo shivered from the tone in Brick's voice.

"You've made your point. I... I will tell you..." Mojo closed his eyes. He had been defeated before this, yesterday. He had lost face and influence with the other two Rowdyruffs. He had lost control of himself and the situation. And now, now he had been thoroughly cowed. But, at least, he would live to see what he had brought into the world come to fruition.

"Yes. You will tell me." Brick eyes narrowed. "And you will aid me, because after I tell you but half of what I know, you will come to see that there is no other way... but mine."

* * *

Boomer sat in the tree, amid the concealing branches.

Pokey Oaks Kindergarten was a small one story building in a peaceful neighborhood, out in the suburbs. This was only the second time Boomer had really left the city and checked them out. There was a measure of tranquility and calm to life here that he hadn't seen before. It appealed to him, in a way.

Down below, he watched the children of the Pokey Oaks work and play. They were a diverse group of boys and girls, and foremost among them were Boomer's enemies... allies... acquaintances...? Regardless of what they were, the Powerpuff Girls seemed to be enjoying themselves, and, additionally, the company of others. They played and learned among the normal children. Children with no powers and no comprehension of the sort of life the Powerpuffs led.

Or, looking at it again, maybe it was Boomer who didn't understand them.

He saw Blossom reading a book near the door. She was listening to a radio, and Boomer's super-sensitive hearing picked up that it was a news station mixed with some light classical. Ironically, it reminded Boomer of the music Mojo tended to listen to while he worked. Butch, obviously, preferred heavy metal and rap to work out to, Brick liked the quiet, and Boomer had no real preference. He didn't listen to much music anyway.

He figured that the pink Powerpuff was waiting for some sort of crisis or breaking news. Boomer had mixed feelings towards her. He'd been the one chosen to fight Blossom, and while he'd held his own and easily kept her occupied while Brick took out Buttercup and Butch manhandled Bubbles, he'd lost, in a way. He'd been taunting her, as he always taunted his opponents, trying to make her sloppy, but in the end he'd gotten overconfident and ended up incapacitated in a block of ice that he should have avoided.

He'd developed a grudging respect for her fighting skills, certainly, and for her willpower. That had only been reinforced when she took command in the last crisis, after Brick been taken out. She hadn't been able to control Butch, but that was no real mark against her. She wasn't as intimidating a presence as Brick, and she hadn't earned Butch's respect yet: of course he wouldn't follow her orders. Boomer had no problem with it, though, and that was something that disturbed him.

Did it make him weak, that he let himself be bossed around by this girl?

By this Powerpuff, who had no right to tell him what to do?

Boomer then focused his attention on Buttercup. He hadn't had much experience with her, but she was definitely Butch's counterpart. Strong, bold, aggressive... except that she seemed to have better control over herself now than Boomer's olive-eyed brother. She was currently involved in a game catch football, throwing the ball weakly (given that a strong throw would put the ball in low earth orbit) to some other kid. There was a small team going, all boys.

Boomer got the feeling that Buttcerup liked being the alpha of that pack.

Did she like lording over the mundanes that surrounded them? She was, without a doubt, the best player on any team that they could have, and it couldn't be kept secret that she was dominating and leading the game. Boomer had a good deal of experience reading people, and there was something about her posture and voice that made him inclined to believe that she wanted to be a leader. This, too, was much like Butch. Butch, indeed, had the traits for a bold tactical leader, but he had no strategic comprehension. That was where Brick, and apparently Blossom, drew their power.

Boomer spent a few more moments thinking about the green siblings.

Butch and Buttercup. They were like the fulcrum. The Girls were sugar, spice, and everything nice. The Boys were snips and snails and puppy dog's tails. Buttercup was the spice, and Bubbles was sugar, and it made sense that Blossom was 'everything nice.' Was he 'snips,' then? What did that say about him? Butch must be the snails: a hungry loner. What did the puppy dog tail represent? ...Cruelty? Everything bad and opposed to everything nice - was that Brick? It couldn't be. Brick cared deeply for his brothers; he couldn't be 'everything cruel.'

Sighing, Boomer saw Bubbles sitting under a different tree, in the shade, drawing on a pad of paper with a large box of crayons. Sugar. Bubbles, more than her sisters, was a mystery, difficult to read and understand. She seemed so... innocent, so untouched and unaltered by the power that she wielded. Or that wielded her. She was happy, content with simple things, simple pleasures. She loved the light, the sky, the world, somehow, she had managed to not even hate or fear him. How could that be? Boomer couldn't fathom her thinking at even a shallow level.

Suddenly, she looked up at him.

He flinched. She couldn't see him. No one could. Yet, she was staring intently right at him. Boomer didn't move. He wasn't afraid, but he was embarrassed. As Bubbles picked up her box, closed the lid, and floated up towards him, notepad under her arm, the blue Rowdyruff was tempted to bolt for it. Instead, he kept still, trusting in his own ability to blend in and be ignored amid the foliage of the old oak tree.

"Hello?" Bubbles got closer, looking back and forth. "Is someone there?"

There was a tiny hint of fear in her voice. Was she afraid that he was there, Boomer wondered... or did she think he was someone else? When she landed on his branch, he made a decision. He tapped her shoulder, and she yelped before quickly turning around.

"Boomer?" She said, surprised. He had, after all, appeared literally out of nowhere.

"Yo." He sat down on the branch.

"What... what are you doing here?" She sat down next to him, holding her crayons and picture over her chest.

"'Was in the neighborhood. Thought I'd see where you girls hang out."

There was a quiet moment, and a rustling of leaves all around them.

"Are your brothers here, too?"

"Nah." Boomer shrugged. "Butch is still laid up and sleeping off after yesterday. Brick's up and around, but he's not totally one hundred percent either. ...If you girls ever wanted a good chance to take us out, now's the time."

"We wouldn't do that." Bubbles looked down, shyly.

"Why not? I would."

She looked him in the eyes. "No you wouldn't."

Boomer grimaced. She was right, of course. Slowly, carefully, almost reverently, she held out her crayons and paper.

"Do you... want to draw something?" She asked.

"I can't draw," Boomer stated, simply. "It'll come out bad, and I'll look stupid."

"You don't know that..."

"Yeah, I do." Boomer stressed. He looked down at the pad of paper: saw the drawings. "Is that...?"

She pointed at the red figure. "That's Blossom." The green one. "That's Buttercup." The blue one. "Me." The tall black and white one. "And the Professor. And that's our house in the back."

Boomer slowly nodded. "How come... you call him Professor, and not dad or something?"

"I dunno." Bubbles gave him a small smile. Boomer found it stupidly ironic. She had a real father, and she didn't even call him one.

"So... don't you want to do something?" Bubbles prompted.

Boomer shook his head.

He was content just sitting and watching.

"Hey!" A voice called out from below. "Look!"

"Damnit." Boomer silently cursed. He'd been sitting and talking with Bubbles out in the open, in plain sight. He hadn't wanted to be seen.

"Whose that?" "How'd he get in that tree?" "Isn't that one of those Rowdyruff Boys?"

"Come on!"

Boomer suddenly found his hand in Bubbles' and she jumped down, taking him with her. Leading him closer to the group of children, he felt nervous. This wasn't what he'd wanted. Brick was charismatic and confident enough to never feel nervous or inadequate around people, and Butch was vicious and proud enough to stand tall in any occasion, but Boomer wasn't as comfortable as his brothers around groups of people he didn't know.

"This is Boomer!" Bubbles said, cheerfully introducing him.

"One of the Rowdyruff Boys." Boomer added. The title usually carried a measure of fear, respect and awe with it in Townsville. Just saying it there got him whatever he wanted, and let him go wherever he felt like it.

"Hi!" "Hey!" A chorus of voices greeted him. He was starting to attract a crowd, but he forced himself to keep calm. He was a living war machine, just like Butch, he had no reason to fear or feel nervous around these mundanes. One by one, the kids said their own names. It was a flurry of information, and Boomer couldn't follow even half of it. A part of him wondered why he should even bother trying.

"So..." One kid asked. "What do you do?"

"What do you mean, what do I do?" Boomer growled, suddenly defensive.

"I was just... do you draw, like Bubbles?"

"No." Boomer crossed his arms. "I'm a fighter."

"Like Buttercup?" Someone else asked.

"...No." Boomer shook his head. He was a fighter, yes, but that's where the similarities between Buttercup and himself ended. He could also feel that Bubbles' sisters were approaching the gathering.

"So you don't do anything but fight?" A large girl asked.

"I... can tell jokes."

"You can?" Another girl piped up. "Let's hear some!"

Floating over to the front of the gathering, Blossom suddenly had a bad premonition about the immediate future.

"Sure thing..." Boomer smiled, and thought for a few seconds. "Ok, kids, step back... gimme some workin' room..."

Blossom nudged Buttercup. "This is a bad idea..."

"Hey..." Boomer walked up to Mitch, looking at his clothes. "Nice fashion sense there, pal. You shop out of a dumpster? This kid's so cheap, if he had to pay to take a dump, he'd vomit!"

"HEY!!"

"That's all right, pal! Don't feel too bad." Boomer then went up to the two twins behind Mitch. "Hey, lookie here: Which one of you is 'with stupid' and how can you tell the difference? Man, you two dudes are so ugly that when ya go into the woods, the trees piss on you!"

The two instantly broke into tears.

"Oh yeah, how could I forget my friend Red?" Boomer gave Blossom a quick wink and leaned in her direction. "Whose big idea was it to make her leader, anyway? Putting her in charge is like putting Janet Reno in the running for Miss September!"

"WHAT?!"

"HEY! No one insults us!" Buttercup raged.

Boomer held up his hands and stuck his tongue out. "I was just kidding! Just kidding! Whew! Geez, B-cup, didn't you take a bath last night? I tell ya, if I smelt that bad I wouldn't even play with myself! It's damn near strong enough to curdle plastic...! Didn't you guys hear? A recent study found that Buttercup was the leading cause of air freshener sales in Townsville! B-O! You'd have to be the toughest Powerpuff... to stand the smell!"

"I'm going to KILL YOU!!"

"I kid! I kid!" Boomer gave her a flashy smile and saw their teacher walking over. He took a moment to remember the name he'd overheard. "Well, here comes the walking dead... Oops! That is to say: Miss Keane! Now, I don't want to go around calling Miss Keane old, but she's got more toes than teeth! When she was born, the Dead Sea was only sick! I mean she farts dust! Fwoosh!"

By this time, Miss Keane was a seething cauldron: steam was rising out of her ears. Buttercup was ready to explode. Blossom was grounding her teeth in rage. Three kids were crying. Bubbles was chuckling nervously, and most of the other kids were either on the floor, laughing their asses off, or in total shock.

"What? What?" Boomer looked back and forth between those he'd offended. "Hey, can't ya take a little roasting? I tell ya what, now you guys can rip on me! Come on! Shoot away!"

"You... jerk!" Blossom yelled.

"Little freak!" Buttercup added.

"Where did you learn language like that, young man?" Miss Keane growled.

Boomer quirked an eyebrow. "You guys ain't very good at this, are ya?"

"What? Insulting people?" Blossom calmed down a tiny bit. "No. We're not."

"No surprise there! This from someone so stupid she thinks 'innuendo' is Italian for getting la..." Boomer never got to finish his sentence. Miss Keane had her hand clamped over his mouth. He looked up at her curiously.

"Not another word!" She demanded, and cautiously removed her hand. Boomer frowned a bit, took a few steps back, and started moving his hands. It looked like sign language, except he had no fingers.

"What's he saying now, the little jerk?" Buttercup still had her fists clenched.

"He says 'what's the problem? I was just joking around.'" Bubbles translated. How she understood fingerless sign language, no one dared guess.

"Those remarks were very hurtful." Miss Keane stood up straight and pointed at Mitch and the Twins. "Just look at what you did to them!"

Boomer's hands moved again.

Bubbles sighed. "He still doesn't understand." She shook her head. "Miss Keane, he doesn't think like we do! Blossom, remember why he was made..."

Boomer scowled.

"He was made... to destroy us..." Blossom trailed off. Boomer was built to be a murderer. A killer. Of course he wouldn't understand, or even care, that his words could do as much damage as any blow.

"That's no excuse!" Buttercup crossed her arms, tightly. "I do not smell! I took a bath last night!"

Of course, she hadn't wanted to take the bath, but that was aside from the point.

"Listen little boy..." Miss Keane rarely sounded so angry. "You can't go around hurting peoples' feelings like that."

He moved one hand. "Why not?" Bubbles translated.

"Because it's not nice!"

His hands moved again. "He says... that he isn't a nice person. He's a Rowdyruff Boy."

"You shouldn't do it..." Buttercup walked up to him and shook a fist in his face. "Because sooner or later you'll get what you deserve!"

"Exactly!" Blossom agreed. "What comes around goes around!"

Boomer snickered and his hands moved very quickly. Bubble gasped.

"Boomer!" She nudged him.

"What?" Buttercup demanded. "What did he say?!"

Boomer was still chuckling. Bubbles hesitated.

"On second thought, I don't want to know." Buttercup grumbled.

After a few seconds, Boomer sighed.

"Sorry," He said and kicked the ground once. "I guess I wasn't thinking. Blossom. Buttercup. Their teacher."

"And those three?" Miss Keane motioned towards his other three victims.

"Nah. I was telling the truth about those three stooges."

She frowned. It wasn't perfect, but it seemed about all they were going to get.

Boomer approached the older woman. "Miss Keane, you are proof that the flower is most beautiful in full bloom." Then to Blossom. "Red, I'd follow you anywhere. You saved out butts yesterday." Then to Buttercup. "And you smell like roses. ...And beef. But mostly roses!"

"Er, why thank you!" "I did, didn't I?" "Hmf!"

"As for you three..." Boomer addressed his last three targets. "I can only say this: I foresee a lot of loose black clothing in your future, and years of painful corrective surgery in your two circus freak buddies..."

Boomer winced as someone hit him upside the head.

"You had that coming!" Bubbles whapped him again with her notepad for emphasis. "No more insults!"

"Violent maniac..." Boomer mumbled under his breath. The bell rang from inside, and just like that, recess was over and the children flooded back into the school. Miss Keane even managed to rouse Mitch and the Twins enough to get them inside. Boomer watched them go.

"You can... sit in..." Bubbles started to say. "If you want to..."

Boomer found his frown, and set it in place.

"I'd... rather not." He turned to leave, but hesitated, looking over his shoulder at her and the school. "Bye."

"Bye." Bubbles waved. Boomer took one last look at the place, and at the drawing in her notebook, before taking off. A part of him had wanted to stay, wanted some taste of a normal and healthy life, but it wouldn't have been his. It couldn't be his. He was right when he'd drawn the stark contrast between Powerpuff and Rowdyruff. Heading back to the heart of the steadily rebuilding Townsville, he closed his eyes, reveled in the feel of the wind in his hair.

Bubbles had her home.

He had his.


	6. Gauntlet: Lies part 6

Like a good communist, I own nothing.

* * *

"Gauntlet: Lies"  
Part 6

* * *

May 9

Professor Utonium carefully examined the vial.

"This will do nicely." He cocked his head, watched as the white acid inside swirled back and forth. "Very nicely, actually. It looks one hundred percent pure."

"We were fortunate. The remains of the monster are almost completely gone, due to both rapid decay and the blood itself eating away at the body."

"I only wish we had a sample from the last one..."

"Or the one before that?"

The Professor thought about that. "Yes, that one too, I believe."

"Why are you suddenly so concerned, John?"

"I dare not say until I am sure." The Professor slipped the vial into a small indentation in the open pocket book he had brought with him. The indent would ensure that there was no chance of the vial being broken in transit. Closing the small case, he dropped it into his left breast pocket, and patted it down.

"You will, of course, forward me any important information..."

"As always, Sarah, you have my complete cooperation." Professor Utonium gave her a half smile. "As per our agreement."

"You always were a sharp one, John. And a tremendous asset to Townsville." Miss Bellum smiled back, her eyes sparkling. "How about some lunch before you head home?"

The Professor checked his watch.

"I've got the time if you do."

He drank his coffee slowly, savoring the bitter taste that he had acquired long ago, when he was someone very different, almost indistinguishable, from what he was now. He had picked it up during high school, as a young man. The tide of his early years had driven him towards science, and the technological innovations of the sixties had only spurred his interests. He was, in many ways, evolving from a selfish privileged brat into a driven man.

He'd been through high school in what seemed like an instant, and plunged into college. He'd excelled in a variety of fields, and that excellence had caused indecision. He had never narrowed down his interest to any particular field, so he had pursued several concurrently: Robotics and Interface technology, numerous Biological and Chemical Fields, and both Newtonian and non-Newtonian particle physics.

He still wasn't completely sure what had drawn him back to Townsville.

He'd developed few friends and contacts in his time away, when he had been earning his degrees. He'd taught at different universities, and those had been enjoyable experiences as a whole, and even worked for the military, but none of them had brought him true satisfaction. Nothing held his attention for more than a few years, and nothing held enough appeal for him to settle down.

Perhaps it was natural, then, that he return to his roots.

To where the direction of his life had changed.

In time, his patience had waned. He had money, more than enough; he had the respect of his peers, undeniably, but happiness...? It continued to elude him. Inspiration, even, was in short supply. It was a time he wasn't particularly proud of, a time when he'd wavered in his principles and beliefs. Fortunately, his impatience had led to the creation of the one thing that brought him joy: his children, his creations, the Powerpuff Girls.

Yet, still, there was a part of him that could not be content.

There had been Sedusa...

He frowned at the memory. The mistake he made with her might have been forgivable in the past, before the girls came along, but not in light of his present circumstances. It had, however, reinforced his resolve in respect to his responsibilities. Yes, and chief among those responsibilities were the growth and care taking of his daughters.

"Why so quiet all of a sudden, John?"

"Just thinking..." He trailed off. He wasn't exactly shy around attractive women (only the beautiful ones he didn't know), but he had to keep his priorities straight. This also wasn't particularly good timing, if what he suspected proved true.

"About what?" Miss Bellum pressed.

"Old times," He answered, after a few seconds.

"John, let me ask you something." She leaned forward a fraction. "Why is it that you never came to any of the class reunions?"

"I never had the time, you know that." He sighed. "There was all those studies in the sixties... and teaching in the seventies, the books I had published in the eighties, not to mention my work for Uncle Sam." He shook his head. "I just didn't have the time."

"You mean you didn't make the time." She observed.

He took a long sip from his coffee, and she let it drop for a moment. She hadn't finished her own food yet, and took a small bite out of what was left. She had taken him to one of her preferred spots, a Vietnamese restaurant in the lower west side of the city that had remained, luckily, unscathed in the last monster attack. With its minimal use of oil, light treatment of meats, and abundance of fresh herbs she found the cuisine quite to her liking.

"No one even knew you'd come back until..." She didn't need to finish her sentence.

"Until the girls ran rampant over the city?" He finished. "I suppose it wasn't the best circumstances for catching up on old times."

"I didn't even recognize you. You still preferred dark red in high school."

He smirked. "The color doesn't really fit me anymore."

"I suppose not." She looked up, briefly, from her food. "What time is it?"

He checked. "Quarter to one."

She nodded to herself, silently.

"Have to get back to the daily grind, eh? Running the city is a big responsibility." His smile faded a little. "You always said you wanted to be a Senator."

"It was the sixties, John." She laughed. "You never saw me burn my bra."

He laughed back and shook his head. "Now that would have been something to see! Would've even drawn me away from Cal Tech, even..."

"We can't all be Consultants, you know." She waved a finger at him. "Besides, I can do more good this way."

"So can I." He let out a deep breath, leaned back, and finished his cup of coffee. "You're worried about things right now, aren't you? Afraid everything will fall apart if you're not there."

"The Mayor..."

"Is an idiot?"

"Don't say that about him!" She snapped back, though not too harshly. "I know I used to say that all the time..."

"But?"

"But... he grows on you. I need him as much as he needs me."

The Professor nodded, slowly. "I understand completely. Believe me, I do."

"I know you worry about the city as much as I do." She took a second to motion to a waiter for the bill then continued. "You wouldn't be doing this if you didn't."

"Really?" He gave her a sly look. "How do you know I'm not just upholding part of the deal? You know, the one that I signed to keep from being thrown in jail for the damage the girls caused?"

"John..." She looked at him seriously. "Don't get defensive. The deal..."

"I gave my word, and I always keep my word. Always." He ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry. You're right... I am defensive... I do care about Townsville, but I care about my girls more, Sarah. Nothing means more to me than them. Especially after I thought they... after those Boys..."

She reached out and took his hand, quickly.

"John. They're fine." She stressed. "Everything came out well..."

"Did it?" He didn't pull his hand back, but she could tell he was tense. "Sometimes I wonder. I question what I did, the choices I made... the ones I continue to make... and now this..."

"Is it that serious?"

"You know how bad it could have been with that other one - the end of civilization, humanity, almost. These aren't your normal monsters, I'm sure of it." He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, and finally pulled back and away. "I need to be certain. For Townsville. For my Girls. ...For myself."

"You're going to see Monster Island, aren't you? That's why you're in such a hurry."

His face was determined, his mind set.

"Yes." He said, softly, standing up. Reaching into his wallet, he took out a twenty-dollar bill and put it on the table, paying for his share of the meal. "Things have gotten out of hand, Sarah. I have a responsibility..."

"So do I." She stood up as well, keeping him eye to eye. "Don't you think you've kept enough secrets from us... from me? You trust me, don't you?"

He looked away, out into the street. Construction was busy putting life in Townsville back together.

"I'll forward what I find out. If I find anything out." He started to walk off, but stopped and looked over his shoulder. "There's one out there right now. I'm certain of it. The Girls will be going out to look for it. They won't know I'm gone, and I don't want you to tell them."

"I've covered for you before, John." She frowned at him. "You'd better come back alive. Townsville needs you."

He made a quick 'hmf' and smirked. "That's debatable."

And he left, leaving Sarah Bellum to pick up what was left of the bill. It wasn't the first time he had done so.

* * *

"What... do you think you're doing?" Brick fell back, fought the urge to clench his still hurting left side. "I didn't come here to fight you."

"Too bad!" Buttercup lunged, and when he flew back, dodging, she leaned into a series of spin kicks, using her speed and flight to maximum advantage. Brick was still hurt, still favoring one side, and she took advantage of that fact. Watching him wince in pain, even though she hadn't actually planted a solid hit on him yet, was almost enough to make her pull her punches.

Her tiny heartbeat's hesitation cost her.

She barely got up her arms to block his forearm strike. He seemed annoyed by the failure of the strike to connect, and Buttercup started to feel confident. At least until his other hand shot forward, while the other pulled down her crossed arms, and he unleashed a blast of green and red energy, point black. Her former block provided no defense from it at such close range, and she flew back, body smoking.

He was breathing heavily, leaning to his left. "Just... back off, girl... I don't have time to play with you."

Buttercup ignored his words. She focused instead on what Brick's uncouth brother had said, insulting her (and a bunch of other people) just hours before. Her eye beams fired, and he shot up like a rocket, firing his own. She zigged and zagged, forcing him to turn to his weak side, where she'd have a slight advantage. Exchanging eye beams with Brick was never a good idea by any definition of the word, but she wasn't planning on making it an extended affair. She knew that she'd have far better chance of beating him up close and personal.

After he'd beaten her twice before, and refused to help her get better, even this small unfair victory would work to take him down a peg. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe she was too stubborn for her own good. Buttercup knew she only had seconds before Blossom realized Brick had come to see her, and what she was planning down at Townsville's docks, and intervened.

He was no fool, however.

She was slowly drawing him into a less advantageous position, but he was also playing keep away. Apparently he knew as well as she did that time was in his favor. Desperation fueling her temper, she finally decided to charge, a second too early. Brick's eyes narrowed as he saw her coming, but Buttercup knew her sheer momentum and positional advantage, coupled with Brick's injury, would keep him from using her own attack to throw her to the ground.

Instead, Brick reached up to his brow, and took off his hat.

Almost casually, he threw it at her, spinning like a saw blade.

Heeding an instinctive warning call, she cut short her charge and pulled out of the way. It tore through the air past her, curved around, and back to Brick's hand. Smirking, he put it back on.

"Smart girl." He fixed it in place on his head. "Getting hit by that would have hurt. A lot."

Buttercup was about to make another attack, but Blossom was already in the air.

She'd lost her chance.

"What's going on between you two?" Blossom's voice had an unusual note to it. "Two days ago you attacked him, and now..."

"She wants to be a better fighter." Brick dismissed Buttercup with his eyes. "I wouldn't help her, so she probably thinks that she can learn from me by attacking out of the blue every so often."

"Well, we don't have time for this sort of thing!" Blossom knew she sounded relieved. 'Relieved that it wasn't something serious,' she mentally added.

"Oh, I agree." Brick floated down to the ground, took in what Blossom was supervising. "What's this?"

"We're going fishing," She said with a smile. "All we need is bait."

"I take it we're not talking about sandworms or clam strips here?"

Her eyes bored into him. "You tell me."

He snorted dismissively and crossed his arms. "And what makes you think I know any more than you do?"

"Call it... woman's intuition. I won't ask 'how,' only 'if.'"

His jaw worked, back and forth. She already suspected something, but what exactly, he wasn't sure. It could be a number of things, but there was no way she would know the truth. No way in hell. Still, Blossom's own imagination could prove just as damaging as any semblance of the true nature of things. She was plunging headfirst into getting rid of the creature that they both knew was out in the sea near Townsville. The difference was that Brick was willing to let it be, at least for the time being. Blossom, however, would not - could not - let it be. There were too many lives at stake, and too many lives already lost.

Finally, he made a decision.

"I... may have an idea..." He looked out to sea, hiding his face from her. "Or two."

Blossom screamed.

Below, the water churned.

Taking a break, she looked towards Boomer, and he tossed her a small plastic bottle of fresh water. She drank greedily - she's been using her sonic scream power for a much longer period than normal, and her throat felt incredibly dry. The Powerpuff Girls had been spread out every hundred meters, and were busy churning up the water with their voices.

Brick had told her that he was 'confident' that the monster was attracted to vibration. Something, however, had told her that he was lying. Sure, it made sense: attacking boats and submarines and swimming monsters, attraction to vibration... and maybe it was so large it didn't dare venture near the beach, but Blossom liked to think that she'd gotten some understanding of his mannerisms. She couldn't read him, no - he was normally too calculated in his actions and words for that, but an instinct was warning her that he hadn't told the truth. Or, maybe, that he'd only told part of it.

That wouldn't have surprised her.

Brick never seemed to reveal the whole truth, about anything.

"Hey, Boomer!"

"'Sup, Red?" The blue Rowdyruff replied. Blossom couldn't say that she liked the nickname, or Boomer's attitude, but still she got the impression that out of the three brothers he'd be the most easy to talk to, and the most likely to give her a straight answer.

"How did you guys come back, anyway?"

"Well, you see, when a mommy Powerpuff and a daddy Rowdyruff love each other very much..."

"Can't you be serious for just one second?" She floated up to him, tried a different approach. With a soft smile, she batted her eyes. She'd tried a similar technique on Brick when she'd been captured and he'd come to check up on her, but it hadn't worked. For the first time, she saw Boomer start to get nervous around her.

"Please?" She added, cooing at him. "Brick doesn't tell me anything..."

"Er... Ah..." He floated back, chuckling anxiously. "Listen, Red, you know I can't tell ya that..."

"Why? It doesn't matter anymore, does it?"

"N...No, I guess not." He held up his hands, and she stopped advancing on him. She quickly returned to her normal self and tone of voice.

"So? How did it happen? Was it Mojo?"

"Mojo..." Boomer shook his head. "He didn't have anything to do with it. Brick brought us back. The first thing I remember, after the pain and the dark, was him. Butch woke up after I did. We were in a building, a warehouse, at the edge of town."

"Wait... you said Brick brought you back?" Blossom was incredulous. "That's not possible. He died. And the formula..."

"Let me finish!" Boomer kneaded his brow, as if unsure whether to actually go on.

"Right. Sorry," Blossom said, quickly, hoping it would encourage him to continue.

It worked.

"I wondered the same thing. Brick explained that... how did it go? ...He said that he was from a few hours in the future, and that he had used a Time Portal invented by Professor Utonium. He said he went back in the past, and recreated himself and us. He said that the version of himself that he had recreated woke up first, and was sent back in time to complete the cycle. That make any sense to you?"

Blossom thought, deeply, and nodded.

"It does, in a way. The Portal doesn't change time - it only fulfills it. Mojo went back in time with it once, and we followed him. It ended up causing circumstances to change that eventually led to our creation. It was a paradox, because if we never existed, we'd never be able to go back in time to inspire our creation. The Professor called it a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Blossom felt some measure of satisfaction at that small truth.

But, in retrospect, was it the truth?

Just before, she had admitted to herself that Brick never told the whole truth, only fractions of it, doled out as it became necessary. And here were small holes in the story. How had that sequence of events occurred without anyone in their own house noticing? Didn't the Professor keep the Time Portal under strict lock and key? And yet, those holes could be explained: it wasn't too hard to break into the Utonium house, especially with the powers of a Rowdyruff or Powerpuff. Also, it would be child's play to get around the Professor's lock, if he either knew the key from the self-fulfilling prophecy, or by just tearing open the vault.

She also knew that if Brick was hiding something, that it would be impossible to spot until he was ready to reveal otherwise. The Rowdyruff leader was smart, and always measuring himself. If he told a lie, it would be a good one, with no glaring flaws. If he told the truth, it would sound like a lie, so that no one could tell the difference.

"Yo!" Boomer pointed off to the right, to where Bubbles and Brick were. "'Thar she blows!'"

"Eh?" Blossom pushed aside her Brick-related concerns and focused on the immediate problem. Near where Bubbles was flying, a couple hundred feet over the water, something massive was cresting the surface, like a whale. Blue and white spray filled the air, and it submerged out of sight.

"Let's get over there!" Blossom looked to Boomer, and he gave her a single nod of assent. They shot over at top speed. "Bubbles! Brick! What was that thing?"

"The big One," Brick answered, quickly.

"Is it gone?" Bubbles' eyes passed over the surface of the water, darting back and forth. "I don't see it."

"Nothing on X-Ray either." Buttercup added.

"It's not gone." Brick started to float upwards. "It's right below us."

Looking down, the entire group, minus the still injured Butch who was still recovering, saw a swirling vortex of blue and black water, foaming like a rabid animal. They scattered, just in time, as a titanic figure leapt out of the water, the vortex breaking and forming into a mouth. Water slouching from its body, the form finally became visible - that of a deranged fish, with a hundred fins of varying sizes, scales sharpened like blades, numbering in the millions, and a mouth like a shark's nightmare. At the forefront was an eyeless head, with empty sockets, trailing water like tears.

"H... holy..." Buttercup's face set as she recovered from the sight of it. "It's all mine!!"

She rushed at it, eyes blazing, hand cocked back to strike. The beams cut easily enough into its body, but rather than bleed, a thick volume of gas and smoke billowed out of the open gash. When Buttercup's fist finally connected, with a resounding crack, she pulled back with a painful yelp, her arm trailing a red line of blood. The creature hit the water the next instant with a splash of inapproachable size, and disappeared once more.

"Buttercup! Are you ok?" Blossom raced over, checked out her sister's wound. Her hand had been cut fairly badly, all the way half up the forearm.

"It's... not deep." She looked down at the water, looking to resume the fight. She pushed Blossom away. "I can still fight! It's my own fault... the edges of its scales are like razors."

"How could something so big... just disappear like that?" Boomer yelled, specifically at his brother.

Brick said nothing; he just furrowed his brows in thought.

"I think... it's coming up again!" Bubbles shot out and away, as the fish's upper body, all two hundred feet of it, emerged from the water, snapping wildly at the blonde Powerpuff. Without even the need for direction, the other children, five in number, fired their eye beams, blasts from their hands, and screamed from the depths of their throats. The creature writhed, for all of three seconds, under the incredible onslaught, and then exploded in a cloud of smoke and vapor.

The headless body hit the water, and disappeared.

"Dare I say it, but that was 'smmmook'n!'"

"Smoked and BBQed!"

"We smoked that fat blunt!"

"Huh? What does that mean?"

"Er... nothing, Bubbles. Just an expression."

Brick, however, was not joining in.

A faint bubbling at the surface caught his eye.

"It's not dead..." He turned to his allies. "Move, you idiots! It's not dead!!"

"What do you mean, it's not..." Buttercup never got to finish her sentence, as something massive reared out of the dark sea. All she saw was an expanse of teeth, white and gleaming, like a forest above and below. For a moment, she felt the cold touch of death. It was only the second time - the first had been when Brick had stood over her, victorious and contemptuous, capable of killing her at any time of his choosing. The feeling came over her like a wave, unstoppable, and coupled with her still present unconquered fear of Brick himself, it left her paralyzed.

She froze.

And winced, as a lance of red light dug into her side, pushing her out of the way. Just a foot from her body, the jaws came together with a wet crunch and the loud grinding of teeth on teeth. The colossal body of the beast flew by her, for what seemed like an entire minute, before the tail passed by and into the ocean below.

Brick floated opposite her, his eyes on the water, trying to follow the creature's movements. Buttercup hadn't thought about it, but now she knew. She knew it had been his eye blast that pushed her out of the way at the last second. He'd saved her life.

"Brick..." She was about to thank him.

"Not now." But he cut her off. "Bloss, the creature turns to liquid form and regenerates in contact with the water. We'll never be able to kill it unless we can isolate it somehow."

"Maybe we can lead it to land?" Boomer suggested.

"Too far away. And there's no guarantee it'll follow. It hasn't approached the shore before." Blossom mentally checked her list of options.

"I've got it!" Brick had a grin of triumph. "We'll improvise! Create a floating island, and drown it on the surface!"

"Create an island?" Bubbles didn't follow. None of them did, except Blossom. Her eyes widened as she realized where he was going.

"Yes! That should work... Bloss, we won't be able to use the crane on the 'Maru' that you set up, but we can still use the tanker itself. We'll need more than one, though. At least three, just to be safe."

"There's another one in Townsville Harbor..." Blossom thumped one hand in the other. "That's two... Plus I bet there's at least two more in Citiesville..."

"That'll do it!" Brick rose up into the air. "Woah! Scatter!!"

Without hesitation, this time, the group blasted apart in random directions. The head of the fish creature again broke the surface, snapping at the tiny insects above it. After having its face out of the water for a few seconds, it slid back into the depths.

"Ok. Here's what we'll do." Brick pointed to Blossom. "Bloss, you and Bubbles go get the Citiesville ship. If they don't give it to you, take it. We don't have time for being delicate with this thing." He then pointed to Boomer. "Bro, go back to Town and get the other ship, and take Buttercup with you. I'll keep it distracted..."

It took only half an hour to get the three massive vessels and tow them into position. Brick himself had taken Blossom's radio-control and directed the 'Maru' closer to them, and the shore, to save time. Meanwhile, skimming low to the surface, he had kept the monster relentlessly trying to catch him in its jaws.

"Once the three ships are in position, you'll have to freeze it over, like an iceberg, so everything stays in position and contact with the seawater is minimal..."

With the three ships lines up, side-by-side, Blossom went down their length, freezing them together and encasing them in blocks of thick ice. As she did so, Bubbles and Buttercup used their sonic blasts to herd and lure it towards the makeshift 'island.' It was an ability only the girls had developed, so while they did that, Brick and Boomer helped keep the ships from drifting until they were totally frozen in place.

"With the island in place, it then becomes a matter of getting this marlin to jump!"

"Here it comes..." Bubbles gulped, a bit unsure.

"Keep your ground. Steadily float backwards." Brick looked to his left. Boomer and Bubbles were next to each other, holding formation. To his right, Blossom and Buttercup were doing the same. Ahead of them, kicking up waves of water, tearing towards them like a torpedo, was the monster, three of its tallest dorsal fins breaking the surface. The five superpowered children were just twenty feet from the surface, holding still.

The perfect bait.

'Especially for this One,' Brick thought, with a smile. What came next would require perfect timing...

"Get ready." Blossom gritted her teeth. "Here it comes..."

With a crash of water loud enough to deafen a normal man, the creature leapt into the air, meaning to come down right on them, mouth wide, a thick forest of teeth ready to impale and gnash into oblivion.

"NOW!" Brick yelled, and they broke formation. Buttercup and Bubbles flew up and to the side, grabbing hold of the head at the hollow grooves where its eyes should have been. Simultaneously, Blossom and Boomer and Brick headed for its exposed underbelly. The former, Blossom and Boomer, then broke off, and seized the creature at the base of its largest lateral fins, while Brick continued towards the tail. Eyes blazing, he burnt away two of the razor edged scales, blackening the surface, and then dug his hands in and pushed.

Slowly, while the massive fish monster thrashed, trying to break free, they upended it, and slammed it down, back first, onto the frozen makeshift island. The ships and ice bobbed and threatened to give under the sudden titanic weight, but ultimately held. Snapping and gasping, its contact with the sea broken and leaving it material and vulnerable, the creature had finally been beached.

"Last... we need to destroy the now solid core. For that, to be certain, overwhelming force must be applied over a short period of time..."

"Furious Flaming Feline!!"

Brick watched, as the three Girls took off, high into the air. He'd been waiting to see this move again, up close. He had been present when the girls had crashed the little get together that was the 2000 'Association of World Supermen.' He had his eye on them, as was only natural - Brick had not kept himself solely constrained to the area of Townsville in the time between his Revelation and the recreation of his brothers.

Quite the contrary.

Still, he had kept an eye on the gathering, and watched as the girls, the same girls that had so casually killed himself and his brothers... no - worse than killed - applied for admission. He smiled amusingly at Buttercup's test of strength. Did she actually think that she had lifted that mountain? It was, of course, impossible to lift a mountain. A mountain is not a solid weight; not a solid thing but rather an accumulation of material. Even if it had been totally solid, something of that size would give out under its own mass when suspended or held up. No, Big Ben had done something to alter the physical properties, specifically density, of the mountain, perhaps of a telekinetic nature.

Bubbles' speed was impressive, however, but could only be practically maintained in a forward direction, and thus, only in a straight line. It was of little use in a true fight, at least: in a true fight with anyone possessing half a brain. Blossom's test had been laughable. He'd gotten a little laugh out of the whole thing, of which he was actually quite thankful. Life had not been possessed of much amusement since his Revelation.

The 'Furious Flaming Feline,' however, had caught his attention.

He hadn't seen the Girls perform that maneuver before, and he recognized some of the tenants behind it. It had certain basic similarities to the Rowdyruff Final Attack that he and his brothers had used, except that Blossom had obviously altered it slightly. Hers focused the energy of the attack externally, not internally. Additionally, the Girls seemed better able to channel and control their energies together, as a group.

The Rowdyruffs could not.

Perhaps they were, by nature, more loners than the Girls. This concern mixed with his thoughts on the lack of telepathy between the brothers ruff. Were they drawing apart, was it that they were too recently created, or was it something else? Had Brick himself made a mistake, changed them somehow, in bringing Butch and Boomer back? How much had he himself changed, through ordeals and death? These questions haunted him.

So he watched, as the girls took off, high into the air. He stretched out his senses: vision, hearing, even feeling, to fathom the technique. He nodded in understanding as the Girl's power manifested in pulsing streaks of bright light, and noted carefully as they fused together, growing stronger as a whole than they had been apart - greater, somehow, than the sum of what they had been before. They erupted in flame, and shot downwards, like a cat shaped comet. At the last second, they curved up, and over the exposed belly of the beached monster.

The hot stink of cooked meat blasted over Brick, but he hardly paid it any heed. He just watched, followed their movements, as the girls came around for another pass, and another, barely avoiding the creature's still snapping jaws. Each attack burnt away more and more of the body, until finally, they found and cut into the living core of the monster. Brick recognized the surge of energy as they mortally wounded it.

"That's enough!" He yelled up, at the Girls. "Get the hell out of here!"

The flaming feline paused in midair, and looked down at him, unsure.

They didn't understand.

"Just do it!" He roared, and was glad to see that Boomer was already taking off at high speed. Brick joined him, low over the water, his passing kicking up a spray of water. The energy from behind reached a peak, a pinnacle, and then there was the loud report of an explosion and the passing of a shockwave. He turned, still flying backwards as he did, and saw a mushroom cloud rise out over the water, gray and white and black and blue.

Far off, he saw three streaks of blue and red and green.

"Good." He said, softly, to himself. The Girls hadn't been near the blast. He'd need them alive. They'd been of invaluable assistance since he'd made the decision to free them, confident that his mind games had ensured their relative loyalty. Together, the Powerpuff Girls and the Rowdyruff Boys had plowed ever forward, and for the moment, they would have a reprieve.

The true test, however, was far from over.

He had Mojo's cooperation and service now. He had the Powerpuff Girls. He had his brothers. He was as ready as anyone could be. And by the time anyone came close to knowing the truth as he did, it would be far too late. The very foundations of the world would be changed, and he would finally... finally... be redeemed.

Brick barked out a short laugh.

He was doing this for those miserable self-righteous little Powerpuffs as much as himself or his brothers. Maybe, in time, they'd even come to realize that.

Or maybe not.

It hardly mattered.

(Continued in the next installment 'Gauntlet: Pain' )


End file.
